8 


r^V       &} 

EESE    LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY    OF    CALIFORNIA. 


Received, 
Accessions  No.. 


KX*^-liS8^ 

Shelf 'No. ._ 


THE    NATION: 


FOUNDATIONS  OF  CIVIL  ORDER  AND  POLITICAL 
LIFE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 


E.  MULFORD. 


NEW   YORK: 

PUBLISHED   BY   KURD  AND   HOUGHTON. 
Catworittgc: 

1877. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1870,  by 

E.  MULFORD, 

IB  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  for  the  Eastern  District  of  Pennsy  iTanfe. 


B1VEBSIDE,  CAMBRIIXU  : 

•T1BBOTTPBD    AND    PRINTED    II 

H.  0.   QOUGQTON  AND  OOMPAHT. 


To  THB 

MEMORY  OF 

MY   FATHER, 

IX  THE  HOPE  THAT  HIS  FAITH  SHALL  LIVE  IN  HIS  CHILDREN'S 
CHILDREN, 

/  DEDICATE   THTR   WORK. 


PREFACE. 


THE  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  ascertain  and  de- 
fine the  being  of  the  nation  in  its  unity  and  con- 
tinuity. There  is  moving  toward  its  realization 
in  national  laws  and  institutions,  the  necessary 
being  of  the  nation  itself.  The  nation  thus 
becomes  an  object  of  political  knowledge. 

It  is  no  abstraction,  but  in  this  alone  is  the 
avoidance  of  abstractions.  It  avoids,  on  the  one 
hand,  an  empty  empiricism,  that  with  the  recogni- 
tion of  no  consistent  principle  makes  the  nation 
only  a  formal  organization,  and  politics  only  a  suc- 
cession of  random  experiments,  hits,  and  ventures  ; 
and  on  the  other  hand,  avoids  an  abstract  idealism, 
which,  regarding  the  state  also  as  only  a  formal 
organization,  would  shape  all  things  after  an  im- 
aginary polity  and  an  abstract  design.  It  is  this 
conception  of  the  state  as  involving  unity  and  con- 
tinuity which  is  the  condition  of  political  science, 
that  is  to  be  set  forth  alike  against  the  political 
empiric  and  the  political  dogmatist.  It  is  this 
alone  which  can  avert  the  danger  which  there  is 
in  the  application  of  formal  and  abstract  concep- 
tions in  politics.  It  is  a  logic  which  is  presumed 
in  politics,  —  if  politics  be  an  object  of  knowledge, 


vi  PREFACE. 

—  but  a  logic  formed  in  the  necessary  conception 
and  manifest  in  the  realization  of  the  nation,  not 
the  barren  forms  of  logic  as  it  is  held  in  the  no- 
tions of  the  schools.  In  this  conception  that  cer- 
tainly is  to  be  retained  which  works  well,  but  polit- 
ical  science  is  to  apprehend  the  law  and  condition 
of  its  working. 

The  apprehension  is  of  the  realization  of  the 
nation  in  the  United  States,  its  substance,  its 
rights,  and  its  powers,  underlying  but  manifest  in 
its  whole  form  and  organization. 

This  book  had  its  beginning  in  a  purpose  to  rep- 
resent the  nation  in  its  moral  being;  to  assert  this 
moral  being  in  its  true  position  in  politics;  but 
the  aim  has  been  throughout  as  the  conception 
widened,  to  define  in  their  relative  and  positive 
character  those  principles  which  are  the  ground  of 
political  science.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  teacher 
of  ethics  can  avoid  the  subject  of  politics.  I  do 
not  believe  that  there  can  be  a  separation  of  them 
in  the  thought  of  a  people,  but  ethics  will  be- 
come abstract  and  formal, — the  dry  product  of 
the  schools ;  and  politics  be  bereft  of  all  its  power 
to  become  at  last  even  a  name  of  reproach.  The 
book  may  thus  serve  to  indicate,  perhaps,  in  some 
measure  the  sources  of  the  power  of  American  in- 
stitutions in  the  formation  of  character. 

I  have  written  in  the  conception  that  holds 
politics  itself  as  a  science  which  is  the  ground  of 
political  education.  In  its  apprehension  of  the  be- 


PREFACE.  Vll 


ing  of  the  nation,  its  unity  and  laws,  which  form 
the  condition  of  science,  political  history,  juris- 
prudence, political  economy,  and  social  statics,  are 
separate  and  subordinate  departments;  political 
history  is  concerned  with  the  rise  and  growth  of 
institutions,  and  the  comparative  value  of  political 
constitutions;  jurisprudence  is  the  science  of  the 
jural  law  and  civil  organization ;  political  economy 
is  the  science  of  wealth,  of  the  relations  of  labor 
and  capital,  of  the  laws  of  production  and  ex- 
change ;  social  statics  is  the  science  of  the  laws  of 
health  and  population ;  international  law  may  be 
regarded  also  as  subordinate,  since  it  presumes 
the  existence  of  separate  nations,  and  is  formed 
mainly  in  the  conception  in  which  the  nation  is 
held. 

A  larger  space  has  been  given  in  some  instances 
to  subjects  of  special  interest  in  the  immediate 
condition  of  affairs,  as  the  jural  and  the  economic 
representation  of  the  nation,  the  relation  of  nat- 
ural and  political  rights,  the  distinction  of  civil 
and  political  rights,  the  representative  principle, 
the  method  and  dangers  of  a  representative  con- 
stitution, and  the  relation  and  difference  of  the 
civil  and  the  international  state,  a  particular  State, 
and  the  United  States. 

I  have  written  with  an  obligation,  which  I  am 
glad  to  acknowledge",  to  the  Eev.  Mr.  Maurice  of 
London,  and  to  Hegel  and  Stahl,  to  Trendelen- 
burg  and  Bluntschli ;  while  I  have  sought  by  ref- 


viii  PREFACE. 

erence  to  them  to  indicate  this,  it  has  been  larger 
than  mere  notes  of  reference  can  trace;  and  I  am 
never  sure  but  their  words  may  have  mingled  un- 
awares with  my  thought ;  I  shall  not  regret  this  if 
it  may  lead  any  who  may  trace  them  to  traverse 
those  rich  and  ample  fields,  or  if  it  may  be  an  aid 
to  larger  knowledge.  This  only  can  be  the  aim 
of  the  worker;  and  it  is  much  to  contribute  to 
the  knowledge  of  the  people  in  any  form  and  in 
however  slight  a  measure.  The  saddest  of  words 
are,  —  the  people  perish  for  lack  of  knowledge. 

-The  slight  references  to  the  Alabama  question  I 
may  say  were  written  before  the  recent  discussion 
of  the  subject,  but  I  have  seen  no  reason  to  change 
them. 

The  words  "nation"  and  "state"  are  used  as 
synonymous,  and  a  particular  State  in  the  United 
States  is  written  "State"  and  is  described  as  a 
commonwealth,  as  the  commonwealth  of  Massa- 
chusetts or  Virginia. 

I  have  sought,  however  imperfectly,  to  give  ex- 
pression to  the  thought  of  the  people  in  the  late 
war,  and  that  conception  of  the  nation,  which  they 
who  were  so  worthy,  held  worth  living  and  dying 
for.  I  know  how  far  it  falls  short  of  that  concep- 
tion which  went  with  them  to  battle  and  sacrifice ; 
yet  I  would  most  care  to  connect,  if  I  may,  my 
work  with  theirs,  and  trust  it  may  be  received  by 
Him,  who  is  the  head  of  all,  to  whom  their  service 
was  done. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAOB 
THE  SUBSTANCE  OP  THE  NATION  ...  ...       1 

The  nation 

1.  Is  founded  in  the  nature  of  man. 

2.  Is  a  relationship. 

3.  Is  a  continuity. 

4.  Is  an  organism. 

5.  Is  a  conscious  organism. 

6.  Is  A  MORAL  ORGANISM. 

7.  Is  a  moral  personality. 

Its  definition  in  the  history  of  political  science. 

CHAPTER  H. 
THE  NATION  AS  DEFINED  IN  THEORIES        .        ....      34 

The  nation  is  represented  as 

1.  A  necessary  evil. 

2.  An  historical  accident. 

3.  A  jural  society. 

4.  An  economic  society. 

CHAPTER  m. 
THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  NATION  AS  DEFINED  IN  THEORIES  .      37 

It  is  said  that  its  origin 

1 .  Is  in  the  development  of  the  family. 

2.  Is  in  mere  force  or  might. 

3.  Is  in  some  instinct  or  emotion  of  man. 

4.  Is  in  the  social  contract :  historical  genesis  of  this  theory. 

5.  Is  in  popular  sovereignty. 

CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  NATION 54 

1.  The  nation  is  of  divine  foundation :  analogy  with  the  family. 

2.  The  evidence  of  its  origin  :  — 


CONTENTS. 


a.  In  its  moral  being  and  personality. 
6.  In  its  government. 

c.  In  its  authority  and  powers. 

d.  In  the  facts  which  indicate  the  consciousness  of  the  people. 

e.  In  the  facts  which  indicate  the  conscience  of  the  people. 


CHAPTER  V. 
THE  PEOPLE  AND  THE  LAND 61 

The  interrelation  of  the  people  and  the  land. 

1.  The  unity  of  the  people. 

2.  The  entirety  of  the  people. 

3.  The  political  people. 

The  influence  of  the  land  on  the  people. 

The  origin  of  the  nation  in  local  contiguity :  theory  ol  Mr.  Maine 
—  of  Mr.  Buckle. 

CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION  OP  RIGHTS 72 

The  law  of  rights. 

The  distinction  of  natural  and  positive  rights. 

a.  Natural  rights. 

b.  Positive  rights. 

The  law  of  the  relation  of  natural  and  positive  rights. 

a.  The  theory  which  defines  their  isolation. 

6.  The  theory  which  defines  their  identity. 
The  distinction  of  civil  and  political  rights. 

1.  Civil  rights,   a.  Of  life.    6.  Of  liberty,   c.  Of  property;  its  repre- 

sentation in  legal  formulas  of  Savigny,  of  Blackstone ;  its  rep- 
resentation in  political  speculations  of  Locke,  of  Considerant, 
of  Hegel.  Criticism  of  Proudhon.  d.  Of  equality  before  the  law. 

2.  Political  rights.     The  rights  of  the  political  people.     The  rights 

instituted  in  the  nation  as  a  moral  organism. 
The  correspondence  of  rights  and  duties. 
Rights  as  defined  in  legal  and  political  forms. 

a.  Original  and  acquired  rights. 

6.  Absolute  and  relative  rights. 

c.  Rights  of  persons  and  things. 
The  realization  of  rights  in  the  nation. 

CHAPTER  VII. 
THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION  OP  FREEDOM       ....     108 

Freedom,  the  realization  .of  personality. 

The  freedom  of  the  people  subsists  in  the  nation,  in  its  moral  per- 
sonality. 

The  law  and  condition  of  political  freedom. 
The  defect  in  the  common  definitions  of  political  freedom. 
The  nation  the  realization  of  freedom. 
The  political  order  is  to  conform  to  the  will  of  the  political  people. 


CONTENTS.  » 

PAQB 

It  is  the  assertion  of  the  self-determination  of  the  people  in  the 

nation  as  a  moral  organism. 
The  realization  of  Freedom  in  Rights. 
a.  It  is  construed  in  Rights. 
6.  It  is  formed  in  institutions. 

On  the  representation  of  political  freedom  in  different  theories. 
On  the  assumption  of  freedom  as  existent  before  the  organization  of 
society. 


CHAPTER 
THE  SOVEREIGNTY  OF  THE  NATION       ......     129 

The  organic  will  of  the  people. 

The  notes   of  sovereignty,     a.  Supremacy.     6.  Authority,    c.  In- 

dependence.    d.  Unity,     e.  Majesty. 
Its  substance,    a.  It  is  inalienable.    b.  It  is  indivisible,    c.  It  is  ir- 

responsible to  any  external  authority,    d.  It  is  the  power  in 

the  political  people  to  determine  the  form  and  order  of  its  own 

political  life. 
The  sovereignty  in  law. 
Definition  of  law  :  The  necessary  elements  in  civil  and  political  law  : 

note  on  the  distinction  of  public  law  and  private  law. 
Government. 

CHAPTER  IX. 
THE  NATION  AND  ITS  CONSTITUTION     ......     144 

The  twofold  character  of  the  constitution,    a.  The  historical  consti- 

tution.    b.  The  enacted  constitution. 
The  convention. 

1.  The  nation  precedes  the  constitution. 

2.  The  constitution  has  the  form  and  style  of  law. 

3.  The  nation  may  amend  the  constitution. 

4.  The  nation  is  to  apprehend  in  the  constitution,  its  conscious 

object  and  aim. 

5.  The  right  of  revolution. 

On  the  relative  and  positive  character  of  the  political  constitution. 

CHAPTER  X. 
THE  NATION  AND  ITS  RIGHTS  OF  SOVEREIGNTY  ....     159 

1.  The  right  to  self-preservation  :  the  habeas  corpus. 

2.  The  right  to  declare  war  and  to  conclude  peace. 

3.  The  right  to  form  international  relations,  by  treaty,  etc. 

4.  The  right  to  coin  money. 

5.  The  right.  to  eminent  domain. 

CHAPTER  XI. 
THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS         .        .        •        •        .171 

The  legislative,  executive,  and  judicial  powers  :  note  on  the  historical 
definition  of  these  powers  in  political  science. 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

These  powers   are:    a.  Organic,      b.  Coordinate,      c.  Coexistent. 

a.  Correlative. 

The  distinction  in  these  powers. 
The  defect  in  the  representation  of  their  division :  the  argument  of 

"the  Federalist." 
The  relation  of  these  powers  to  the  physical  force  of  the  nation :  the 

military.    The  declaration  of  martial  law,  or  the  suspension  of 

the  habeas  corpus. 

a.  The  legislative  department. 

b.  The  executive  department. 

c.  The  judicial  department. 

On  the  relation  of  the  judiciary  to  the  legislative  power :  the  polit- 
ical province  of  the  judiciary. 

CHAPTER  XII. 
THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE  CONSTITUTION       .        .    210 

The  representative  government. 

The  principle  of  representation  as  defined  in  theories :  that  the  gov- 
ernment is  formed  :  a.  In  the  representation  of  interests.  6. 
Of  families,  c.  Of  numbers,  d.  Of  properties  or  accidents 
attaching  to  men. 

The  Republic  formed  in  the  representation  of  persons. 

The  law  of  representation. 
o.  Its  historical  justification. 

b.  Its  realization  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people :  self-government. 

c.  Its  realization  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  organism. 
The  Republic  formed  in  the  Democratic  principle. 

On  various  qualifications,  a.  A  property  qualification.  6.  A  lit- 
erary qualification. 

On  the  representation  of  public  opinion. 
On  the  representation  of  minorities. 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
THE  NATION  AND  ITS  RELATION  TO  OTHER  NATIONS  .        .        ,251 

The  external  sovereignty  of  the  nation. 

The  right  of  recognition. 

The  authority  and  province  of  international  law. 

CHAPTER  XIV. 
THE  NATION  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 258 

The  ancient  and  modern  representation. 
The  laws  of  their  relation  and  development. 
The  freedom  of  the  individual. 

On  the  defect  in  the  representation  of  individualism  in  some 
theories. 


CONTENTS.  Xlll 

CHAPTER  XV. 

MM 

THE  NATION  AND  THE  FAMILY 276 

The  necessary  and  moral  interrelation  of  the  nation  and  the  family. 
The  obligation  of  the  nation  to  maintain  the  moral  order  of  the  family. 
Note  on  the  representation  of  the  relation  of  the  family  and  the  na- 
tion in  Shakespeare. 

CHAPTER  XVI.' 
THE  NATION  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH 283 

The  formation  of  society  in,  a.  The  family,    b.  The  commonwealth. 

c.  The  nation : 
Note  on  the  historical  growth  of  this  conception  in  political  science  • 

Aristotle.    Hegel. 
The  commonwealth  is 

a.  The  civil  organization :  it  is  defined  in  the  jural  relations  of  so- 

ciety. 

b.  The  economic  organization  :  it  is  defined  in  the  necessary  rela- 

tions of  society. 

It  is  constituted  in  the  maintenance  of  civil  rights  and  civil  order.   Its 

procedure  is  in  the  common  law. 
a.  The  unity  of  the  commonwealth. 
6.  The  scope  of  the  commonwealth. 

Its  historical  growth.  Its  illustration  in  the  constitution  of  the  Com- 
monwealth of  Pennsylvania. 

The  institution  of  courts.     The  civil  court.     The  constabulary. 

The  relation  of  the  nation  and  the  commonwealth. 
a.  The  nation  is  immanent  in  the  commonwealth. 
6.  The  nation  is  external  to  the  commonwealth. 

The  commonwealth  is  the  civil  corporation.    Its  formal  rights. 

The  concurrent  powers  of  the  nation  and  the  commonwealth. 

The  law  of  their  relation. 

The  commonwealth  as  defined  in  theories,  a.  They  are  vast  corpo- 
rations having  their  origin  in  some  charter  and  continuing 
with  certain  vested  powers,  b.  They  are  separate  political  so- 
cieties, each  existent  in  the  original  sovereignty  of  an  inde- 
pendent political  power,  c.  They  form  an  organic  whole,  in 
whose  complex  political  organism  the  States  exist  each  as 
an  original  integer :  theory  of  Mr.  Hurd  and  Mr.  Brownson. 

On  the  distinction  of  a  central  government  and  a  local  administration. 

CHAPTER  XVII. 
THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OP  THE  CONFEDERACY         .        .    321 

The  confederate  principle. 

Its  definition  by  Montesquieu ;  by  Freeman. 

Its  appearance  in  the  formal  constitution  in  an  age  of  political  trans- 
ition. 

The  conflict  of  the  confederacy  with  the  nation  in  its  organic  and 
moral  unity. 

The  historical  conflict  in  the  United  States. 


xiv  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XVIH. 

PAOI 

THE  NATION  THB  ANTAGONIST  or  THE  EMPIRE  ....    342 

The  imperial  principle. 
The  law  of  aggrandizement  in  the  empire. 
The  subversion  of  the  moral  life  and  development  of  the  people. 
The  subversion  of  the  freedom  of  the  people :  its  fatalism. 
Its  illustration  in  Spain ;  in  Austria. 

The  conflict  of  the  empire  with  the  nation  in  its  organic  and  moral 
unity. 

The  confederate  principle  in  Greece. 

The  imperial  principle  in  Rome. 

CHAPTER  XIX. 
THE  NATION  THE  INTEGRAL  ELEMENT  IN  HISTORY     .        .        .    355 

The  vocation  of  the  nation  in  history  :  history  a  development  in  the 

realization  of  the  moral  order  of  the  world. 
The  nation  formed  in  the  conditions  of  history. 
The  conflict  of  the  nation  with  slavery. 
The  conflict  of  the  nation  for  humanity. 

The  moral  order  of  the  world,  the  fulfillment  of  humanity  in  God. 
The  church  and  the  natio'n. 
The  Protestant  principle. 
The  nation,  the  Christian  nation. 

CHAPTER  XX. 

THE  NATION  THE  GOAL  OF  HISTORY 383 

Conclusion. 


LTBBARY 


!    r.\uv'n 

TON? 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    SUBSTANCE    OF    THE    NATION. 

THE  premise  of  political  speculation  has  been  the  as- 
sumption of  the  existence  of  man  apart  from  the  state. 
It  has  portrayed  an  age  when  the  conflict  of  right  and 
wrong  was  unknown :  there  was  in  the  lives  of  men  no 
care,  nor  toil,  nor  endeavor ;  there  was  neither  chief  nor 
law,  neither  soldier  nor  battle ;  there  was  no  judge  nor 
police,  no  plaintiff  or  defendant ;  there  was  neither  mar- 
riage nor  homes ;  property  was  unrecognized,  no  bound- 
aries of  land  were  traced,  and  the  ample  gifts  of  the  earth 
were  held  by  all  in  common ;  the  individual  existed  in  the 
fullness  of  all  his  powers,  while  yet,  as  in  the  traditional, 
and  the  ancients  say  derisive,  line  of  Homer,1  — 

"  No  tribe,  nor  state,  nor  home  hath  he." 
1  This  imaginary  state  is  drawn  by  the  old  counselor,  in  the  Tempest:  — 

"  Gon.  —  I  would  by  contraries 
Execute  all  things;  for  no  kind  of  traffic 
Would  I  admit;  no  name  of  magistrate; 
Letters  should  not  be  known;  riches,  poverty, 
And  use  of  service,  none-;  contract,  succession, 
Bourn,  bound  of  land,  tilth,  vineyard,  none; 
No  use  of  metal,  corn,  or  wine,  or  oil; 
No  occupation;  all  men  idle,  all; 
And  women  too,  but  jnnocent  and  pure; 
No  sovereignty. 

All  things  in  common  nature  should  produce 
Without  sweat  or  endeavor:  treason,  felony, 
Sword,  pike,  knife,  gun,  or  need  of  any  engine, 
Would  I  not  have ;  but  nature  should  bring  forth, 
1 


2  THE  NATION. 

But  this  scene,  as  it  is  traced  in  political  speculation, 
soon  closed,  its  course  was  interrupted  and  disturbed ; 
the  impulses  of  men  arousing,  brought  them  in  collision ; 
strong  desires  came  to  clash  with  each  other ;  there  was 
the  necessity  for  toil,  and  the  lives  of  men  were  harassed 
with  care ;  there  was  division,  and  distrust  was  provoked ; 
then  some  power  was  required  to  maintain  the  imperiled 
security,  to  punish  fraud  and  restrain  violence ;  and  thus 
the  state  came  into  being ;  its  origin  was  in  necessity,  and 
its  form  was  that  of  a  repressive  force  in  the  institution 
of  an  external  order. 

The  same  premise,  in  the  assumption  of  the  contrasted 
picture,  has  represented  the  primitive  condition  as  char- 
acterized by  every  evil.  It  was  a  constant  warfare  ;  fear 
and  self-interest  directed  human  action  ;  the  grasp  of 
avarice  brooked  no  limit;  hatred  was  the  habitude  of 
men  ;  tumult  and  violence  alone  prevailed.  Then  it  is 
conceived  that  the  state  came  into  being,  as  an  evil  also, 
but  slighter  and  sooner  to  be  borne  than  those  which  ex- 
isted apart  from  it,  and  as  before  in  the  form  of  a  repress- 
ive force. 

These  imaginary  pictures  divest  man  of  the  actual  cir- 
cumstance and  the  actual  relations  of  life.  They  are  only 
abstractions.  There  is  no  trace  of  the  natural  man,  and  of 
the  primitive  age  which  they  portray.  They  are  assumed 
as  the  necessary  material  out  of  which  to  construct  the 

Of  its  own  kind,  all  foison,  all  abundance, 
To  feed  my  innocent  people. 

"Seb.  —  No  marrying  'mong  his  subjects? 

"Ant.  —  None,  man;  all  idle:  whores  and  knaves." 

The  Tempest,  act  ii.  sc.  1. 

In  contrast  to  this,  Shakespeare  has  represented  the  actual  condition  of  man 
apart  from  society,  in  the  Caliban.  This  condition  is  not  ascertained  from  the 
fragmentary  traces  of  savage  life,  for  in  the  lowest  stage  of  the  actual  condition 
of  man,  there  is  the  recognition  of  some  relations,  some  principles  of  associ- 
ation, and  some  authority,  in  the  will  of  a  chief  or  the  sanction  of  custom.  The 
most  exact  representation  of  this  condition  is  thus  in  some  assumed  character 
as  the  Caliban. 


THE  SUBSTANCE  OF  THE  NATION.          3 

artificial   systems  of   political   schools.       They   have    no 
foundation  in  the  nature,  or  in  the  history  of  man. 

The  position  of  Aristotle  is  the  necessary  postulate  of 
political  science,  —  "  Man  is  by  nature  a  political  being." 
The  elements  of  the  nation  are  in  his  nature,  and  its  prog- 
ress is  in  the  development  of  his  nature.  The  earliest 
and  the  widest  records  of  his  existence  disclose  a  condition 
in  which  there  is  the  recognition  of  some  common  relation, 
and  men  appear  as  dependent  upon  each  other,  and  as 
seeking  association  with  each  other  ;  they  make  sacrifices 
for  it,  and  accept  obligations  in  it. 

The  nation  has  its  foundations  laid  in  the  nature  of 
man.  It  is  the  normal  condition  of  human  existence. 
There  is  in  it,  as  the  organization  of  human  society,  the 
manifestation  of  human  nature.  The  nature  of  man,  apart 
from  the  nation,  is  unfulfilled  ;  and  in  the  individual,  in  his 
isolation,  the  destination  of  humanity  is  unrealized  ;  the 
old  words  are  verified,  unus  homo,  nullus  homo. 

The  nation,  therefore,  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  an  arti- 
fice which  man  has  devised,  nor  as  an  expedient  suggested 
by  circumstance,  to  secure  certain  special  and  temporary 
ends.  It  has  other  ground  and  other  elements.  It  is 
often  described  as  a  contrivance  of  human  skill,  and  gov- 
ernment as  the  cunning  or  clumsy  device  for  the  accom- 
plishment of  certain  objects  in  certain  transient  periods. 
A  recent  writer,  identifying  government  with  the  nation, 
says  it  is  "  a  machine  for  applying  certain  principles,"  etc. ; 
but  even  as  an  illustration,  this  conveys  a  misconception. 
The  machine,  when  it  is  made,  is  apart  from  the  maker, 
and  complete  in  itself,  and  separate  from  the  power  which 
impels  it ;  but  the  nation  never  exists  as  a  complete 
construction,  and  always  is  in  identity  with  the  people. 
The  nation,  moreover,  cannot  be  moved  as  a  machine,  but 
has  in  itself  thought  and  will  and  power  to  do  or  not  to 
do,  and  capacity  to  suffer  or  rejoice.  The  nation  exists, 


4  THE  NATION. 

only  as  men  are  lifted  out  of  a  mechanical  existence  ;  in  it 
there  is  the  assertion  of  their  determination,  and  their  free 
endeavor.  And  man  does  not  owe  the  conception  of  the 
nation  to  the  genius  of  an  individual,  nor  is  it  the  in- 
vention of  a  separate  age.  The  highest  ingenuity  could 
not  have  compassed  it,  and  it  is  not  to  be  counted  among 
the  achievements  of  human  wisdom.  The  machine  also 
wears  out,  with  time  and  use,  when  another  is  made  in  its 
stead ;  but  it  is  not  thus  with  states,  and  tthere  is  no  law  of 
physical  necessity  which  thus  limits  them. 

This  representation  of  the  nation  as  a  mechanism  —  the 
work  of  human  craftsmen  —  is  the  root  of  the  confusion 
which  appears  in  the  definition  of  man's  savage  or  rude 
condition  as  the  "  natural  state,"  and  the  emergence  from 
it  into  civilization,  as  the  "  artificial  state."  It  is  the  dis- 
tinction, on  the  assumption  of  which  so  many  social  schemes 
and  such  vast  social  theories  of  natural  and  artificial  society 
have  been  built.  The  law  of  Aristotle  has  here  its  appli- 
cation in  political  science,  —  "  The  nature  of  that  which 
is,  is  to  be  ascertained  from  its  mature  condition  ;  "  not 
in  its  germ,  nor  yet  in  its  decay,  but  in  its  fullness  and  its 
perfectness  do  we  discern  the  true  nature  of  a  thing; 
or,  what  every  being  is  in  its  perfect  condition,  that  cer- 
tainly is  the  nature  of  that  being.1 

i  Aristotle's  Politics,  bk.  i.  ch.  2. 

R.  von  Mohl,  in  one  of  his  later  works,  represents  the  state  as  only  one 
in  the  successive  spheres  of  human  life  which  he  enumerates  as  the  sphere 
of  the  individual,  of  the  family,  of  the  race,  of  society,  of  the  state,  and  of  the 
association  of  states  in  their  international  relation.  The  special  characteristic  of 
this  description  is  the  distinction  of  society  and  the  state;  the  former  is  described 
as  the  common,  yet  the  unorganized  and  the  unformed  life  of  man.  But  this  dis- 
tinction has  no  justification,  and  in  it  society  in  itself  is  undefined,  and  every 
trait  which  is  drawn  to  give  to  it  a  positive  substance  and  form  is  derived  from 
what  is  represented  as  another  sphere  —  either  that  of  the  individual,  or  of  the 
state.  When  it  is  further  said  that  there  is  a  law  and  rights  belonging  to  society, 
as  apart  from  the  state,  which  yet  have  the  character  of  neither  national  nor 
common  law,  and  of  neither  political  nor  civil  rights,  the  absence  of  all  ground 
for  the  distinction  becomes  still  more  apparent,  for  law  and  rights  presume  -an 
organic  life  and  an  organized  society.  R.  von  Mohl,  Encyklopadie  der  Staatsiois- 
esnschaften,  p.  17.  See  also  Bluntschli's  Geschiehte,  p.  616. 


THE  SUBSTANCE  OF  THE  NATION.          5 

The  nation  is  a  relationship.  They  who  exist  in  it  are 
not  held  only  by  some  external  force,  and  are  not  bound 
only  by  some  formal  law.  In  the  sketches  given  of  ex- 
istence apart  from  society,  the  state  was  represented  as 
if  men  entered  it  from  a  condition  of  individual  isolation, 
and  as  itself  the  resultant  of  their  individual  accession. 
This  isolation  is  unreal ;  it  is  the  atomy  of  the  state,  which 
regards  it  as  the  collection  of  so  many  units.  It  is  a 
premise  which  is  devised  to  sustain  political  systems  and 
political  abstractions.  The  isolation  of  men  presumes  a 
conception  which  is  inhuman,  and  it  is  not  in  its  separation 
but  in  its  relations  that  humanity  is  comprehended.  If, 
moreover,  this  isolation  be  allowed,  it  does  not  furnish  the 
elements  out  of  which  the  state  can  be  formed,  and  it  can 
suggest  no  law  in  which  the  transition  to  the  state  may  be 
made. 

The  origin  of  the  state  is  not  in  some  speculative 
theory  nor  in  some  formal  scheme.  The  entrance  to  it  is 
not  through  a  reflective  process,  nor  by  an  act  of  individ- 
ual volition.  It  has  the  characteristic  of  all  relationships, 
in  that  it  has  not  its  beginning  in  a  reflective  or  a  volun- 
tary act,  while  in  it  the  individual  is  conscious  of  existence 
as  a  person. 

It  is  not,  in  its  normal  course,  out  of  a  condition  which 
is  external  that  men  enter  the  nation,  but  they  are  born  in 
it,  and  it  has  the  natural  condition  of  relationship. 

The  recognition  of  its  law,  and  the  obedience  to  its  au- 
thority, is  not  then  conditioned  upon  the  arbitrary  choice 
of  those  who  constitute  it,  but  in  reference  to  it  the  arbi- 
trary action  of  the  individual  is  precluded. 

It  is  a  common  relationship,  and  there  are  none  exempt 
from  its  conditions,  and  none  in  the  nation  can  make  their 
lives  to  be  as  if  it  had  not-  been.  There  are  none  unaf- 
fected by  it,  but  each  is  involved  in  every  moment  of  its 
existence.  • 

In  the  politics  of  Aristotle,  human  relationships  —  the 


6  THE  NATION. 

man  and  woman,  the  father  and  mother  and  child  —  are  ap- 
prehended as  the  sign  and  suggestion  of  society,  by  which 
its  existence  is  suspected,  and  in  which  its  principle  is  con- 
tained. Then  the  constituents  of  society  are  sought  in  a 
house,  but  the  family  is  not  therefore  the  lesser  state,  nor 
the  state  simply  a  collection  of  families,  since  each  has 
its  own  nature  and  end,  while  each  as  a  relationship  has 
therein  its  elemental  principle.  It  was  in  the  visionary 
republic  of  Plato  that  all  relationships  were  swept  away 
as  antagonistic  to  its  ideal  unity,  but  as  the  nation  is  ap- 
prehended as  itself  a  relationship,  these  are  apprehended 
as  integral  in  it  and  correspondent  to  it. 

There  is  for  the  family,  apart  from  the  nation,  a  neces- 
sary imperfectness,  as  also  they  will  hold  best  the  relation 
of  citizenship  who  hold  best  the  relation  of  brothers  and 
husbands  and  fathers. 

The  nation  is  subject  to  the  conditions  of  all  relation- 
ships. If  the  consciousness  of  them  perish,  the  art  of  man 
can  devise  no  substitute.  Their  strength  can  be  supplied  by 
no  artificial  bond,  however  subtly  forged.  They  are  deep 
as  life,  and  in  their  mysterious  power  there  is  the  holiest 
communion,  so  that  their  only  illustration  in  the  phvsical 
world  is  in  the  vine  and  the  branches,  and  the  body  and 
the  members. 

It  is  thus  that  citizenship  has  its  significance  as  a  rela- 
tionship. It  is  not  carelessly  that  human  lips  have  called 
their  country  the  father-land  ;  nor  is  it  with  vague  and  idle 
phrases,  but  in  a  spirit  of  holy  and  son-like  sacrifice  and  in 
solemn  crises,  that  men  have  turned  to  their  country  as  the 
mother  of  all. 

The  nation  is  a  continuity.  It  no  more  exists  complete 
in  a  single  period  of  time  than  does  the  race  ;  it  is  not  a 
momentary  existence,  as  if  defined  in  some  circumstance. 
It  is  not  composed  of  its  present  occupants  alone,  but  it  em- 
braces those  who  are,  and  have  been,  and  shall  be.  There 


THE   SUBSTANCE   OF   THE  NATION.  7 

is  in  it  the  continuity  of  the  generations,  it  reaches  back- 
ward to  the  fathers  and  onward  to  the  children,  and  its 
relation  is  manifest  in  its  reverence  for  the  one  and  its 
hope  for  the  other. 

The  evidence  of  this  continuity  is  in  the  consciousness 
of  a  people.  It  appears  in  the  apprehension  of  the  nation 
as  an  inheritance,  received  from  the  fathers,  to  be  trans- 
mitted unimpaired  to  the  children.  This  conviction,  that 
has  held  the  nation  as  an  heritage  worth  living  and  worth 
dying  for,  has  inspired  the  devotion  and  sacrifice  of  a  people. 

The  evidence  of  this  continuity  is  also  in  the  fact  that 
the  spirit  of  a  people  always  contemplates  it.  The  nation 
has  never  existed  which  placed  a  definite  termination  to 
its  existence  —  a  period  when  its  order  was  to  expire  and 
the  obligation  to  its  law  to  cease.  It  cannot  anticipate  a 
time  when  it  shall  be  resolved  into  its  elements,  but  con- 
tends, with  the  intensity  of  life,  against  every  force  which 
threatens  dissolution.  Those  who  have  represented  the 
state  as  a  compact,  have  yet  held  it  to  be  a  perpetual  one, 
in  which  the  children  are  bound  by  the  acts  of  their  fathers. 

This  continuity  is  the  condition  of  the  existence  of  the 
nation  in  history.  The  nation  persists  through  a  form  of 
outward  circumstance.  Judaea  was  the  same  under  the 
judges  and  under  the  kings ;  Rome  was  the  same  under 
the  kings  and  under  the  consuls.  The  elements  of  the  be- 

o 

*  ing  of  the  nation  subsist  in  this  continuity.  In  it,  also,  the 
products  of  human  effort  are  conserved,  and  the  law  of 
human  production  conforms  to  it.  The  best  attainments 
pass  slowly  from  their  germ  to  their  perfectness,  as  in  the 
growth  of  the  language  and  the  law,  the  arts  and  the  liter- 
ature of  a  people.  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  through  intervals 
of  slow  advance,  precede  Shakespeare,  as  Giotto  and  Peru- 
gino  lead  the  way  to  Michael  Angelo  and  Raphael. 

The  nation  is  a  continuity,  as  also  in  itself  the  product 
of  succeeding  generations.  It  transcends  the  achieve- 
ment of  a  single  individual  or  a  separate  age.  The  life  of 


8  THE   NATION. 

the  individual  is  not  its  measure.  In  its  fruition  there  is 
the  work  of  the  generations,  and  .even  in  the  moments  of  its 
existence  the  expression  of  their  spirit,  the  blending  of  the 
strength  of  youth,  the  resolve  of  manhood,  and  the  experi- 
ence of  age  —  the  hope  and  the  aspiration  of  the  one,  the 
wisdom  and  repose  of  the  other.  There  is  the  spirit  which 
is  always  young,  and  yet  always  full  of  years,  and  even 
in  its  physical  course  the  correspondence  to  an  always  re- 
newed life.1 

This  continuity  has  found  expression  in  the  highest  po- 
litical thought.  Shakespeare  has  it  in  his  historical  plays ; 
the  continuity  of  the  nation  is  represented  as  existing 
through  the  years  with  the  vicissitudes  of  the  people,  in 
the  changes  of  scene,  with  the  coming  and  going  of  men ; 
and  there  is  as  in  the  nation  the  unity  of  the  drama  in 
which  so  many  actors  move,  and  whose  events  revolve 
from  age  to  age ;  and  thus  these  plays  hold  an  attraction 
apart  from  the  separate  scenes  and  figures  which  present 
some  isolated  ideal  for  the  poet  to  shape.  Burke  has  rep- 
resented this  continuity  in  the  nation  as  moving  through 
generations  in  a  life  which  no  speculative  schemes  and 
no  legal  formulas  may  compass :  "  The  nation  is  indeed  a 
partnership,  but  a  partnership  not  only  between  those  who 
are  living  but  between  those  who  are  living,  those  who  are 
dead,  and  those  who  are  to  be  born." 

The  life  of  the  individual  is  brief,  but  in  the  nation  it 
may  become  a  continuous  power.  The  character  of 
Achilles  may  have  a  worth  for  all  in  its  abstract  ideal, 
but  in  the  history  of  Greece  it  was  always  a  living  energy. 
They  who  have  been  the  leaders  of  a  nation  in  the  strength 
and  nobleness  of  their  lives  are  always  in  a  vital  relation 
to  it.  The  traditions  of  valor  and  sacrifice  in  the  memory 
of  a  people  become  the  inspiration  of  its  hope. 

The  work  of  the  individual  is  brief  also,  and  in  its  isola- 

1  Nee  temporis  unius,  nee  hominis,  esse  constitutionem  Reipublicae.  —  Cicero, 
De  Republica,  bk.  iii.  ch.-  21. 


THE  SUBSTANCE  OF  THE  NATION.          9 

tion  would  be  almost  vain,  but  in  the  continuity  of  the  na- 
tion it  is  enwrought  in  the  longer  social  development. 
Thus,  also,  a  single  generation,  in  its  furthest  advance, 
achieves  but  little  in  comparison  with  the  long  line  of  the 
generations  in  the  nation,  and  if  there  is  laid  on  any  the 
necessity  of  battle,  still  the  holiest  triumph  is  that  in  which 
the  life  of  the  nation  in  its  continuity  is  maintained. 

The  nation  is  an  organism.  It  has  an  organic  unity,  it 
is  determined  in  an  organic  law,  and  constitutes  an  organic 
whole.  There  is  a  political  truth  whose  worth  may  be 
measured  against  the  sciolism  of  many  recent  theories,  in 
the  ancient  words,  —  "  As  the  days  of  a  tree  are  the  days 
of  my  people."  The  nation  is  shaped  by  no  external  force, 
but  by  an  inner  law  ;  its  changes  are  those  of  a  develop- 
ment ;  its  strength  appears  in  its  regarding  all  division  as 
the  sundering  of  life  ;  and  the  glory  of  the  people  has  been 
not  in  the  uprooting,  but  in  the  maintaining  and  advancing 
of  the  work  of  its  ancestors.  This  imparts  to  the  people 
an  energy  which  does  not  wholly  perish  in  the  waning  of 
its  years,  it  breaks  the  external  bonds  which  fetter  it,  and 
flourishes  amid  the  vastest  historical  changes. 

The  nation,  as  an  organism,  has  the  characteristic  of 
every  organism  —  unity  and  growth  and  identity  of  struc- 
ture. It  has  not  merely  an  apparent  sequence,  nor  a  con- 
structive force,  but  is  a  development  after  an  organic  law. 
It  is  not  a  confused  collection  of  separate  atoms,  as  grains 
of  sand  in  a  heap,  and  its  increase  is  not  through  their  ac- 
cumulation. It  has  the  unity  of  an  organism,  not  the 
aggregation  of  a  mass ;  it  is  indivisible  ;  its  germ  lies 
beyond  analysis,  and  in  it  is  enfolded  its  whole  future. 
This  unity  is  the  postulate  of  the  existence  of  the  people 
as  a  nation,  and  the  condi4ion  of  its  independence.  An 
identity  of  structure  also  pervades  the  whole.  Thus  the 
defect  of  a  part  injures  the  whole ;  and  if  a  part  be  sev- 
ered it  ceases  to  exist,  as  the  limb  which  is  cut  from  the 
body,  or  the  branch  from  the  tree. 


10  THE   NATION. 

The  nation,  therefore,  is  not  something  which  can  be 
torn  down,  and  then  from  the  old  material  built  up  again 
in  other  nations.  It  is  planted,  it  is  not  made.  It  is  not 
constructed  out  of  preexisting  parts,  but  is  an  whole,  and 
the  law  of  Aristotle  holds,  —  the  whole  is  before  the  parts  ; 
that  is,  a  whole  cannot  be  made  of  parts,  but  the  whole 
is  predetermined,  to  which  the  parts  belong,  or  it  is  only 
in  the  conception  of  the  whole  that  the  parts  appear.  A 
sum  or  aggregate  can  be  composed  of  separate  units,  but  it 
is  only  their  mass,  and  there  can  be  predicated  of  it  neither 
unity  nor  growth,  nor  identity  of  structure. 

The  law  of  an  organism  defines  the  relation  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  the  nation.  They  who  form  the  organic  whole, 
in  their  relation  to  it,  and  to  each  other,  are  its  members. 
Its  bond  is  not  formal ;  its  action  is  not  mechanical.  The 
members  are  formed  in  and  through  it,  as  they  form  it,  and 
are  not  as  the  wheels  in  mills,  and  the  shuttles  that  slide  in 
looms,  but  the  members  of  a  living  body.  They  are  affected 
by  it,  not  as  by  an  external  force,  acting  on  component 
particles,  but  as  by  a  living  spirit  working  through  the 
whole.  The  laws  of  life  in  the  physical  body  do  not  act 
with  more  unvarying  certainty  than  in  the  body  politic. 

The  consciousness  of  this  organic  relation,  is  the  ground, 
also,  of  the  normal  action  of  the  individual.  Hegel  says, 
the  mob  in  a  nation  is  the  force  which  acts  without  or 
apart  from  the  organization  of  the  whole.  There  may 
thus  be  an  ignorant  or  a  learned  mob,  a  mob^f  men  of 
fashion  or  of  men  of  science,  but  the  spirit  is  the  same,  and 
in  its  severance  from  the  organic  people  there  is  the  same 
essential  vulgarity.  This  has  an  illustration  of  singular 
force  in  one  of  the  political  plays  of  Shakespeare.  When 
Caius  Marcius  turns  to  the  crowd  in  Rome  and  denounces 
them  as  the  detached  and  disorganized  rabble,  in  whom 
there  is  nothing  of  the  organic  unity  of  the  people,  the  dis- 
dain of  the  Roman  is  in  the  words,  "  Go,  get  you  home, 
you  fragments  !  "  and  those  who  in  the  conceit  of  culture 


THE  SUBSTANCE  OF  THE  NATION.          11 

or  of  wealth,  or  of  higher  interests,  or  of  spiritual  endow- 
ments, withdraw  from  the  normal  political  action  of  the  na- 
tion, are  obeying  the  impulse  of  the  mob,  and  are  as  the 
very  fragments,  for  whom  the  Roman  patrician  felt  such 
unmeasured  scorn.1 

The  antithesis  to  the  nation  as  an  organic  unity,  is  in 
the  conception  which  frames  it  upon  abstractions.  It  as- 
sumes a  certain  scheme  of  rights,  or  system  of  laws,  and 
then  proceeds  to  construct  the  state  out  of  these  rights, 
or  sets  it  forth  as  the  product  of  this  formal  law.  These 
assumptions  are  destitute  of  an  historical  foundation,  and 
arise  in  the  empty  notion  that  men  by  a  reflective  act  can 
constitute  the  nation,  and  that  it  exists  as  the  sequence  of 
an  abstract  conception.  The  most  disastrous  of  political 
falsehoods  is  this,  which  in  any  form  holds  the  nation  in 
identity  with  a  legal  or  dialectical  system,  and  then  pro- 
ceeds to  its  construction,  after  the  design  of  the  abstract 
reason.  It  is  destructive,  and  the  whole  existent  order  is 
constantly  liable  to  be  razed,  in  order  to  substitute  an 
imaginary  polity  in  Tts  stead. 

The  apprehension  of  the  nation  as  an  organism,  is  the 
condition  of  political  science.  It  involves  the  distinction 
of  an  art  and  a  science  ;  there  may  be,  for  instance,  an  art 
in  building  heaps  of  stones,  but  there  is  no  science  of  stone- 
heaps.  The  unity  and  identity  of  structure  in  an  organ- 
ism, in  which  a  law  of  action  may  be  inferred,  form  the 
condition  of  positive  science. 

This  is  the  source,  also,  of  constructive  political  power, 
and  of  all  that  is  enduring  in  the  work  of  the  statesman. 
In  the  recognition  of  this  fact  —  of  the  organic  being  of 
the  state  —  the  most  is  gained,  says  Bluntschli,  for  the 
practical  study  of  political  subjects.  And  it  is  significant 
that  political  writers  of  grasp  and  wide  influence,  as 
Spinoza  and  Hobbes,  proceeding  from  a  premise  which 
precludes  the  organic  unity^  or  being  of  the  state,  have  yet 

1  See  Maurice,  The  Workman  and  the  Franchise,  p.  9. 


12  THE  NATION. 

been  led  to  represent  it  as  a  living  body,  and  have  de- 
scribed it  as  some  colossal  man.  This  conception,  when 
presented  by  those  whose  postulate  is  the  contractual  ori- 
gin and  definition  of  the  state,  indicates  the  reality  of  its 
existence  as  an  organism. 

It  is  also  significant  that  the  assertion  of  the  nation  as 
an  organic  unity,  in  modern  political  thought,  should  have 
proceeded  from  the  historical  political  school.  Savigny, 
who  may  be  named  as  its  representative,  describes  the  na- 
tion as  "  the  organic  manifestation  of  the  people."  l  Yet, 
the  necessary  conception  of  the  nation  as  an  organism 
transcends  the  limits  of  an  historical  school,  and  while  the 
roots  are  traced  in  the  past,  there  is  necessarily  a  continu- 
ous development,  and  it  passes  into  the  future  in  the  un- 
folding of  its  own  ^erm.  In  the  forgetfulness  of  this,  the 
historical  school  reverts  only  to  the  past  to  dwell  among 
its  forms,  and,  as  the  sense  of  a  living  continuity  and  en- 
ergy fades  away,  it  becomes  of  all  schools  the  most  dry  and 
barren. 

But  although  the  nation  is  organic,  it  is  not  limited  to 
the  definition  of  a  physical  organism.  Its  description  in 
this  logical  limitation  is  often  repeated ; 2  it  is  said,  for 
instance,  that  the  nation,  as  the  individual,,  passes  through 
the  necessary  periods  of  youth,  manhood,  and  age  ;  that 
it  flourishes,  and  after  maturity  ceases  to  exist  —  its  bloom 
is  followed  by  inevitable  decay.  The  deeper  truth  is  in 

1  Savigny's  Syst.  des  Rom.  Rechts,  vol.  i.  p.  22. 

"  In  every  separate  people  the  universal  spirit  of  man  manifests  itself  in  an 
individual  way,  and  the  growth  of  rights  has  a  common  social  ground."  —  Syst. 
des  Rom.  Rechts,  vol.  i.  p.  20.  See  Bluntschli's  Allgemeinen  Statsrecht  und  der 
Politik,  p.  568. 

2  "As  men  are  born  and  live  for  a  certain  period,  and  at  last  die  of  age  or  in- 
firmity, so  also  states  are  constituted ;  they  flourish  for  some  centuries  and  then 
at  last  cease  to  exist."  —  Frederick  II.,  Antimacchiavelli,  ch.  ix. 

Mr.  Spencer  says,  —  "  We  find  not  only  that  the  analogy  between  society  and 
a  living  creature  is  borne  out,  but  the  same  definition  of  life  applies  to  both.'* 
—  Social  Statics,  p.  490.  It  may  be  doubted  if  the  elaborate  analogy  which  Mr. 
Spencer  draws,  carried  as  it  is  through  the  detail  of  a  minute  anatomy,  has  any 
justification.  The  description  of  an  exact  correspondence  to  the  physical  or- 
ganism often  serves  as  a  display  of  anatomical  science.  The  literature  of  poli- 


/ 
v/  / 

THE  SUBSTANCE   OF   TH£  -NATION.  />    / x          13 

7/'  </       A 

the   words   of   the    Roman    statesman, — 'VTJie    state  /ft  + 
*u..mA/)  f™  eternity."  l  \^      t/   A       '  ^/ >> 

3TAe  nation  is  a  conscious  organism.  Tfr-is  the-  /dotis 
life  of  the  people  ;  it  knows  its  own  object  and  the  pu*rpf>se 
which  is  given  it  to  fulfill.  Its  action  does  not  proceejj^/ 
from  mere  impulse,  and  it  is  not  directed  by  a  merely  aim- 
less energy,  but  there  is  in  it  that  conscious  spirit  which 
apprehends  an  object  before  it,  and  apprehends  it  as  its 
own.  "  The  nation,"  says  M.  Thiers,  "  is  that  being 
which  reflects  and  determines  its  own  action  and  purpose." 

It  has  a  determinate  end,  and  apprehends  in  its  own 
conscious  purpose  its  vocation  in  history.  This  conscious- 
ness of  a  vocation  enters  into  the  spirit  of  every  his- 
torical people,  and  is  the  basis  of  its  historical  life. 
The  nation  has  in  correspondence  to  its  vocation  a  de- 
terminate character :  its  character  is  the  manifestation  of 
the  purpose  it  has  realized  in  its  vocation.  Its  character 
becomes  thus  as  clearly  outlined  as  that  of  its  foremost  men. 
Rome  has  a  character  as  distinct  as  that  of  CaBsar,  and 
Greece  as  that  of  Pericles. 

The  conscious  life  and  vocation  of  the  nation  appear  in 
the  spirit  with  which  it  invests  its  members,  and  those  who 
are  called  to  the  execution  of  its  purpose.  There  is  a 
quality  in  its  membership  which  is  distinct  from  that  in 
a  life  withdrawn  from  it,  and  there  is  a  spirit  in  the  fulfill- 
ment of  its  trusts  and  offices  which  it  alone  imparts. 
When  the  thought  and  action  of  the  members  and  officers 
of  a  nation  become  empty  routine,  the  mere  work  of 
functionaries,  there  is  the  sign  of  the  loss  of  a  living  energy, 

tics  has  many  monograms  on  this  correspondence,  in  which  for  instance  the 
members  of  the  political  society  are  compared  to  the  cells,  and  the  legislative 
power  to  the  head,  or  the  economy  to  the  stomach,  and  so  on;  but  they  are 
mainly  subject  to  the  criticism  of  von  Mohl,  —  "  These  conceptions  of  the  state 
and  its  correspondences  based  upon  physical  science  appear  from  time  to  time, 
partly  through  an  altogether  sickly  tendency  of  thought,  and  partly  through  a 
mystical  and  fanciful  conceit."  —  Etieylclopadie  der  Staatswissenschaften,  p.  84. 

1  "  Debet  enim  eonstituta  sic*  esse  civitas  ut  seteraa  sit."  —  Cicero,  De  Repub- 
Kca,  bk.  iii.  ch.  3. 


14  THE  NATION. 

and  the  decadence  of  a  people.  It  has  been  said  that 
there  was  in  the  office  of  a  Roman  consul  an  inherent 
majesty,  which  often  gave  dignity  to  a  person  of  ordinary 
character,  and  ennobled  him  with  its  spirit ;  and  there  is 
in  the  office  of  a  representative  of  the  people  a  power 
which  may  lift  the  possessor  above  the  divisions  of  party 
and  the  interests  of  factions,  so  that  he  is  made  to  stand 
in  a  living  relation  to  the  nation,  whose  work  and  pur- 
pose is  to  be  wrought  through  him.  It  is  thus,  also, 
that  one  who  is  called  to  a  public  trust  or  office  in  the 
nation,  is  not  simply  a  private  person,  nor  to  be  so  re- 
garded. 

The  conscious  life  of  the  people  appears  in  its  literature 
and  arts,  its  manners  and  laws.  These  are  moulded  in  the 
type  of  the  individual  life  of  the  nation,  so  that  with  the 
universal  element  in  literature  and  art  and  law  there  is  the 
individual  element  in  which  the  characteristic  of  the  peo- 
ple is  traced.  These  not  only  bear  the  impress  of  its  pe- 
culiar type,  but  there  is  in  its  being  the  field  of  their 
growth.  The  constructive  polity,  and  the  art  and  litera- 
ture of  a  nation,  thus  terminate  with  its  historical  course. 
There  may  be  great  works  produced  after  its  close,  but 
their  root  was  in  the  past,  and  with  its  decay  they  soon 
cease ;  as  there  were  solitary  great  Grecians  and  Romans 
after  the  loss  of  the  national  life  of  Greece  and  Rome,  but 
the  line  soon  expires.  Their  spirit  can  survive  in  no  other 
people,  and  their  work  can  be  resumed  by  none.  The 
Turks  gain  possession  of  Greece,  and  the  French  of 
Egypt,  but  the  monuments  and  arts  do  not  belong  to 
them,  they  do  not  recognize  their  spirit  in  them,  and  can- 
not continue'  them.  All  that  England  can  do  with  the 
sculptures  called  the  Elgin  marbles,  is  to  place  them  in  a 
museum. 

This  consciousness  of  the  vocation  of  the  nation,  how 
ever  reluctantly  acknowledged  or  dimly  apprehended,  has 
been  stronger  than  the  individual  intention  of  its  members. 


THE   SUBSTANCE   OF   THE  NATION.  15 

It  has  determined  the  course  of  the  greater  in  the  succes- 
sion of  its  leaders  and  its  kings,  and  has  turned  them 
from  their  individual  bent,  when  they  could  not  warp  it  to 
their  own  use.  In  England  and  France  the  greater  rulers, 
as  Henry  VIII.  and  Louis  IX.,  have  been  those  who  have 
held  the  best  apprehension  of  and  given  the  clearest  expres- 
sion to  this  vocation ;  and  kings  and  ministers  who  have 
sought  to  thwart  it,  or  even  failed  to  be  penetrated  by  it, 
have  been  set  aside,  or,  as  illustrative  of  its  weakness  in 
some  ages,  are  left  to  stand  as  passive  figures  in  its  lines. 

In  the  conscious  life  and  vocation  of  the  nation,  there  is 
the  ground  of  its  identity  of  purpose,  through  the  suc- 
ceeding generations.  Its  purpose  is  transmitted  from  the 
fathers  to  the  children.  The  consciousness  of  its  destina- 
tion becomes  clearer  in  the  advance,  as  it  fades  in  the 
degeneracy  of  the  people,  and  is  obscured  in  the  prece- 
dence of  selfish  interests,  and  at  last  blotted  out  in  stu- 
pidity and  slavery.  Thus,  also,  the  early  incident  of  a  peo- 
ple may  contain  the  premonition,  and  its  historical  epochs 
and  crises  the  revelation,  of  its  vocation.  There  is  through 
all  the  same  great  promise,  the  same  memories,  and  the 
same  hopes.  The  longer  years  alone  are  its  measure. 
The  calling  of  the  nation  thus  may  endure  through  hu- 
miliation and  defeat,  and  through  evil  days,  when  there 
is  only  a  remnant  left  who  keep  its  ancient  faith  and 
guard  its  errand  from  forgetfulness. 

This  is  held  slightly  by  the  teachers  of  the  technic  of  po- 
litical art,  and  by  those  who  would  limit  politics  to  political 
economy,  but  the  consciousness  and  the  fulfillment  of  the 
vocation  of  the  people  are  the  condition  of  its  power ;  this 
vocation  is  the  postulate  of  national  character  and  national 
freedom.  The  people  has  in  it  no  external  limitation 
which  impairs  action,  but  is  strong  and  free  only  as  it 
works  it  out.  The  people  that  fails  to  hold  its  calling 
carefully  and  reverently  cannot  attain  a  strong  national 
life,  and  weakness  and  inevitable  disaster  result  when  its 


16  THE   NATION. 

purpose  is  but  feebly  grasped,  and  servility  and  degradation 
when  it  becomes  the  imitator  or  the  copyist  of  another. 

The  nation  is  a  moral  organism.  In  the  necessary  ele- 
ments of  its  existence  in  history  it  transcends  the  merely 
physical  conditions  of  a  physical  organism ;  and  in  free- 
dom, and  law,  and  order,  in  the  fulfillment  of  a  conscious 
purpose  and  vocation,  and  in  the  obligation  to  law,  are  the 
very  elements  of  a  moral  being. 

It  is  a  moral  organism ;  that  is,  its  members  are  persons 
who  subsist  in  it,  in  relations  in  the  realization  of  person- 
ality. It  is  the  condition  in  which  a  person  exists  in  the 
fulfillment  of  the  relations  of  life  with  those  who  are  per- 
sons. There  is  in  it  the  assertion  of  a  justice,  which  is  the 
affirmation  of  a  person  in  the  recognition  and  institution  of 
these  relations  between  the  moral  whole  and  the  moral 
parts  of  the  whole.  Its  law  is  regulative  of  the  moral 
whole,  and  of  the  parts,  in  these  relations. 

It  is  as  a  moral  organism  that  the  nation  is  the  field 
of  the  action  of  man,  in  law  and  in  freedom.  There  is, 
therefore,  in  it  the  education  of  the  individual,  the  growth 
and  formation  of  character.  There  is  in  its  normal  devel- 
opment the  coming  into  the  world  of  that  which  is  laid  in 
the  nature  of  humanity,  in  its  true  and  original  constitu- 
tion. 

It  is  as  a  moral  organism  that  there  are  in  the  nation 
the  conditions  of  the  moral  life  of  the  individual.  In  the 
assumed  isolation  of  man  there  is  the  negation  of  the  moral 
life  which  is  formed  in  moral  relations.  Thus  all  the  re- 
lations of  life  in  its  moral  order  are  constituted  in  the 
nation,  and  are  to  be  maintained  through  its  institutions 
and  by  its  enactments.1 

It  is  as  a  moral  organism  that  the  nation  is  the  sphere 

l  "  Whosoever  lays  violent  hands  upon  the  state,  assails  the  conditions  of  all 
moral  life,  and  therefore  the  crime  is  regarded  as  the  greatest."  —  Trendelen« 
burg,  Naturechte  aus  dem  Grande  der  Ethik,  p.  286. 


THE   SUBSTANCE   OF  THE  NATION.  17 

of  the  individual  person.  The  fact  of  a  vocation  cannot 
consist  with  his  isolation.  It  presumes  an  existence  in  a 
conscious  relationship,  and  its  fulfillment  is  in  the  relations 
of  a  moral  order.  It  is  thus  that  there  is  formed  in  the 
nation  the  consciousness  of  the  relationship  of  humanity, 
and  the  moral  life  of  the  individual  is  apprehended  in  it  as 
the  life  which  is  truly  human. 

The  process  of  the  nation  is  only  as  a  moral  organism. 
It  is  not  constituted  in  the  necessary  process  of  the  phys- 
ical world,  but  it  is  constituted  in  the  order  of  a  moral 
world.  Its  course  is  defined  in  law,  and  in  law  as  pre- 
scribing the  actions  and  relations  of  men  as  moral  agents. 
Its  attainment  is  in  freedom.  Its  goal  is  peace,  and  that 
not  in  the  barren  conception  in  which  there  is  the  nega- 
tion of  purpose  and  energy,  but  peace  as  the  conquest  of 
man,  in  which  there  is  the  satisfaction  of  his  spirit  and  the 
achievement  of  his  aim. 

The  conditions  of  history  presume  the  being  of  the  na- 
tion as  a  moral  organism.  History  is  not  a  succession  of 
separate  events  and  actions,  but  a  development  in  a  moral 
order,  and  in  the  unity  and  continuity  of  a  life  which  moves 
on  unceasingly,  as  some  river  in  its  unbroken  current. 
But  it  is  only  as  the  nation  is  an  organism  that  this  unity 
and  continuity  is  manifest  in  it,  and  as  a  moral  organism 
that  this  moral  order  is  confirmed  in  it. 

The  nation  thus  cannot  be  comprehended  in  the  defini- 
tion in  its  logical  limitations  of  a  physical  organism.  The 
distinction  of  a  physical  and  a  moral  organism  is  necessary, 
and  becomes  the  illustration  of  the  being  of  the  nation,  in 
its  necessary  conception.  It  is  as  follows  :  — 

The  physical  organism  is  determined  in  itself  by  a  law 
of  necessity,  as  the  tree  which  cannot  be  other  than  it  is : 
the  ethical  organism  is  determined  in  a  law  of  freedom, 
which  is  the  condition  of  moral  action.  In  the  physical 
organism,  each  member  exists  only  in  its  relation  to  the 
whole,  as,  for  instance,  the*  hand  is  nothing  without  the 

2 


18  THE  NATION. 

body,  and  has  no  separate  significance :  in  the  ethical  or- 
ganism, each  member  has  in  itself  a  necessary  significance, 
and  each  member,  furthermore,  has  the  destination  in  itself, 
for  which  the  whole  exists,  and  which  the  whole  has  in 
itself.  The  whole  subsists  in  the  same  relation  and  has 
the  same  destination  as  the  individual,  and  neither  the 
whole  nor  the  individual  has  a  secondary  existence,  nor 
can  be  made  only  a  means  to  the  end  of  another.  In  the 
physical  organism,  the  elements  which  are  atomic,  under 
a  law  of  combination,  are  taken  up  and  separated  again, 
and  as  they  pass  back  into  unformed  nature,  it  is  only  to 
reappear  in  other  and  manifold  forms :  in  the  ethical  or- 
ganism, the  members  are  individuals  existing  each  in  his 
own  identity,  and  each  is  so  related  to  the  whole  that 
instead  of  a  construction  after  the  exclusive  type  of  the 
whole,  it  is  indifferent  to  say  that  the  individual  has  his 
type  in  the  whole,  or  the  whole  its  type  in  the  individual. 
In  the  physical  organism,  the  changes  are  through  neces- 
sary periods,  as  youth  and  age,  or  spring  and  autumn,  and 
the  elements  which  are  chemical,  and  so  on,  are  formed 
after  the  law  of  these  periods ;  but  in  the  ethical  organ- 
ism the  process  is  not  through  the  periods  of  a  necessary 
sequence,  and  its  members  exist  in  each  moment  of  its  ex- 
istence in  uninterrupted  relations  of  youth  and  age.  Its 
life  consists  in  the  constantly  unfolding  life  of  humanity.1 

1  The  logical  fallacy  of  defining  an  ethical  by  a  physical  organism,  and  limit- 
ing the  one  to  the  conception  of  the  other,  appears  in  Draper's  Civil  Polity.  The 
description  of  the  growth  and  maturity  and  decay  of  nations  is  repeated  with  a 
solemn  monotony,  as  if  history  was  an  unbroken  succession  of  funereal  pag- 
eants. But  the  nations  do  not  exist  in  history  in  this  limitation  in  a  physical 
sequence;  they  appear  under  the  conditions  of  amoral  life,  and  their  growth  or 
decay  is  traced  not  in  necessary,  but  in  moral  causes. 

There  is  in  the  same  school  the  utter  denial  of  the  real  freedom  of  the  individ- 
ual and  the  nation,  when  it  aims  to  define  freedom  only  in  the  limitations  of  a 
physical  necessity,  and  the  mind  of  man  is  regarded  only  as  involved  in  the 
physical  process  of  nature.  Yet  not  infrequently  exhortations  are  made  in  the 
same  school  on  the  beauty,  or  the  duty,  or  the  excellence  of  political  morality, 
and  these  may  be  often  the  expression  of  an  emotive  fervor  or  of  prudent  counsel ; 
but  they  can  avail  little  when  they  are  connected  with  a  merely  economic  con- 
ception of  the  nation,  and  are  separated  from  their  only  consistent  postulate  in 
its  organic  and  moral  being. 


THE  SUBSTANCE   OF  THE  NATION.  19 

The  nation  is  a  moral  personality.  This  is  the  condi- 
tion of  its  vocation,  as  in  the  fulfillment  of  its  vocation  there 
is  the  formation  of  its  character.  The  moral  personality 
of  the  nation  is  determined  in  its  consciousness ;  in  its 
conscious  purpose  subsists  its  independence  of  other  na- 
tions, that  it  is  not  to  be  necessarily  what  they  are  nor  as 
they  are.  Its  object  is  before  it,  which  it  knows  as  its  own; 
its  freedom  is  in  the  working  out  of  its  vocation,  and  in  its 
goal  there  is  the  satisfaction  of  its  desire. 

The  condition  of  the  realization  of  personality  is  the 
same  in  the  nation  as  in  the  individual.  This  condition  in 
each  is  the  clearness  and  fullness  in  which  it  comprehends 
its  purpose  and  is  centred  in  it.  The  source  of  strength 
is,  as  with  the  individual,  in  working  faithfully  after  the 
type  of  its  own  individuality,  and  bringing  this  to  its  free 
and  clear  development.  The  being  of  the  nation  is, 
therefore,  not  merely  in  an  apparent  sequence,  but  in 
conformance  with  the  law  which  is  laid  in  its  being. 

The  scope  of  the  nation  thus  is  not  exhausted  by,  and 
its  powers  are  not  derivative  from  a  sphere  of  outward  cir- 
cumstance ;  it  is  not  comprehended  in  a  summary  of  enact- 
ments nor  defined  in  an  abstract  system.  The  only  limit- 
ation is  its  self-limitation  in  its  being,  as  a  moral  person. 
In  this  is  the  postulate  of  its  law  and  the  line  of  its  progress. 
There  are  no  bars  or  barriers  before  the  course  of  the  free 
spirit  of  the  people,  and  the  nation  moves  in  its  advance 
towards  the  higher  personality  which  is  realized  in  its 
vocation,  which  is  of  God,  in  history.1 

The  nation  is  a  moral  person,  since  it  is  called  as  a 
power  in  the  coming  of  that  kingdom  in  which  there  is 
the  moral  government  of  the  world,  and  in  whose  comple- 
tion there  is  the  goal  of  history.  It  is  a  power  in  the  moral 
conflict  and  conquest  which  is  borne  through  history,  to 
the  final  triumph  of  the  good.  It  is  a  power  manifest  in 

1  "National  character  ist  der  gottliche  Beruf,  einer  nation." — Stahl,  Philo- 
•aphie  des  Rechts,  vol.  i.  p.  365. 


20  THE   NATION. 

the  judgment  of  history.  But  in  the  formal  and  artificial 
conception  of  the  nation  this  power  becomes  a  fiction,  and 
in  the  mechanical  conception  it  has  no  moral  ground. 

The  nation  is  a  moral  person,  since  its  development  is  in 
an  integral  moral  life.  Its  character  is  its  own,  it  is  not 
derivative  from  any  powers  on  earth  ;  it  does  not  proceed 
through  them,  and  its  responsibility  cannot  be  transferred, 
nor  its  obligation  rendered  to  them.  It  is  not  the  vehicle 

O 

in  which  another  and  a  separate  power  is  carried  to  its  end, 
nor  the  frame-work  in  which  another  life  is  to  be  built, 
nor  the  shadow  which  in  a  disturbed  economy  falls  from 
some  other  order  or  organization  that  alone  is  lifted  into 
the  clear  light,  and  alone  knows  the  triumph  of  the  good. 
It  is  not  the  instrument  for  the  pursuance  of  the  vocations 
of  separate  individuals,  which  are  to  be  held  before  it  as 
separate  and  special  ends,  nor  in  the  formation  of  the  char- 
acter of  certain  individuals,  does  it  alone  have  its  end; 
but  as  its  vocation  is  its  own,  and  it  is  judged  in  it,  it  has 
its  own  end.  Its  ground  is  not  in  the  individual,  but  in 
the  historical  life  of  humanity.  It  has  for  its  end  not  the 
speciaFbut  the  universal ;  its  assertion  is  not  of  the  indi- 
vidual will,  but  of  law  which  is  the  universal  will ;  its  in- 
stitution is  not  in  the  right  of  one,  nor  of  a  few,  but  in  the 
rights  of  man. 

The  nation  is  a  moral  person,  since  it  is  formed  in  a 
moral  conflict.  It  is  not  merely  phenomenal  in  its  moral 
being.  It  is  not  the  perfect  image,  nor  yet  the  passive 
reflection  of  righteousness,  as  of  something  external  to  it, 
but  its  being  and  the  condition  of  its  being  is  in  righteous- 
ness. Yet  it  is  not  therefore  a  self-righteous  power,  but 
exists  in  the  institution  of  righteousness  in  the  moral  order 
of  the  world.  It  is  formed  in  a  real  conflict.  The  nation,  in 
the  attainment  of  its  being,  is  to  strive.  There  is  always 
in  its  freedom  the  possibility  of  evil,  but  in  evil  there  is 
also  the  negation  of  its  being. 

The  being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  person  has  its  witness 


THE  SUBSTANCE   OF  THE  NATION.  21 

in  the  consciousness  of  men.  It  has  awakened  the  higher 
moral  emotion,  and  its  response  has  been  from  the  higher 
moral  spirit.  It  has  called  forth  the  willing  sacrifice  of 
those  who  were  worthy.  The  life  of  the  individual  has 
been  given  for  the  life  of  the  nation.  The  offering  has 
been  laid  upon  that,  which  in  the  holiest  spirit  has  been 
held  as  an  altar,  and  life  has  been  given  in  that  sacrifice  in 
which  life  is  found.  If  the  nation  had  only  a  formal 
existence,  this  moral  spirit  could  have  no  justification,  and 
if  its  origin  was  in  self-interest,  to  call  for  self-sacrifice 
would  be  the  negation  of  it;  and  if  its  end  was  only  in  the 
protection  of  the  life  and  property  of  the  individual,  this 
surrender  of  them  would  be  the  immediate  defeat  of  its 
end. 

The  nation  is  a  moral  person,  since  it  is  the  organized 
life  of  society,  and  society  is  formed  in  the  spirit  and  in 
the  power  of  a  personal  life.  It  is  to  be  governed  in  the 
conscious  determination  of  the  will,  and  to  act  as  one  who 
looks  before  and  after.  The  strength  which  is  to  be 
wrought  in  it,  exists  only  in  rectitude  of  thought  and  of 
will ;  wisdom  and  courage,  steadfastness  and  reverence, 
faith  and  hope  are  attributes  of  it ;  the  highest  personal 
elements  become  its  elements  and  are  moulded  in  its  spirit. 

The  relation  of  the  individual  to  the  nation  presumes,  as 
its  necessary  condition,  the  existence  of  the  nation  as  a 
moral  person.  The  individual  becomes  a  person  in  the 
nation,  and  this  involves  the  existence  of  the  nation  as 
also  a  person  ;  for  personality,  as  it  is  formed  in  relations, 
can  subsist  only  in  an  organic  and  moral  relationship  —  a 
life  which  has  a  universal  end.  The  nation  is  thus  the 
sphere  of  a  realized  freedom,  in  which  alone  the  life  of 
man  fulfills  itself,  and  it  is  to  give  expression  to  all  that  is 
compassed  in  life.  It  moves  toward  the  development  of  a 
perfect  humanity.  Its  symbol  is  the  city  of  an  hundred 
gates,  through  which  there  passes  not  only  the  course  of 
industry  and  trade,  but  the  forms  of  poets  and  prophets 


22  THE  NATION. 

and  soldiers  and  sailors  and  scholars  —  man  and  woman 
and  child,  in  the  unbroken  procession  of  the  people.  Its 
warrior  bears  the  shield  of  Achilles,  on  which  there  are 
not  only  the  figures  of  the  mart  and  sea  and  field,  the  loom 
and  ship  and  plough,  but  the  houses  and  the  temples  and 
the  shrines  and  the  altars  of  men,  the  types  of  the  thought 
and  endeavor  and  conflict  and  hope  of  humanity. 

The  condition  of  the  being  of  the  nation,  as  the  power 
and  the  minister  of  God  in  history,  is  in  its  moral  person- 
ality ;  in  this  it  is  constituted  in  history  as  the  moral  order 
of  the  world,  and  for  the  fulfillment  of  that  order. 

The  assertion  of  the  moral  being  of  the  nation  has  been 
the  foundation  of  that  which  is  enduring  in  politics,  and 
has  been  embodied  in  the  political  thought  and  will  which 
alone  have  been  constructive  in  the  state.  Aristotle,  who 
gave  the  furthest  attainment  of  the  ancient  world,  says, 
"  The  end  of  the  state  is  not  merely  to  live,  but  to  live 
nobly." 1  Hegel,  who  has  given  a  yet  wider  expression  to 
modern  thought  than  did  Aristotle  to  the  ages  before  him, 
—  and  tliere  is  no  other  name  with  which  the  parallel  may 
be  drawn,  —  represents  the  state  as  the  realization  of  the 
moral,  and  in  the  moral  alone  it  has  its  substance  and  be- 
ing. He  says,  "  The  state  is  the  realization  of  the  moral 
idea,"  2  and  "  The  state  is  the  realization  of  freedom,  and 
it  is  the  absolute  end  of  reason  that  freedom  be  real,"  3  and 
"  The  state  is  no  mechanism,  but  the  rational  life  of  self- 
conscious  freedom,  the  order  of  the  moral  world ;  "  4  and 
again  he  says,  "  There  is  one  conception  in  religion  and 
the  state?  and  that  is  the  highest  of  man."  5 

There  is  no  other  conception  which  has  such  power  in 
the  thoughts  of  men,  and  in  this  age  it  has  the  greater 
significance  when  it  is  drawn,  not  from  a  school  of  puritan 

1  Aristotle's  Politics,  bk.  i.  ch.  2. 

2  Hegel's  Philosophic  des  Reehts,  p.  312. 
8  Ibid.  p.  31T. 

4  Ibid.  p.  340. 

6  Hegel's  Philosophic  der  Religion,  vol.  i.  p.  170. 


THE  SUBSTANCE  OF  THE  NATION.         23 

politics,  but  from  those  most  widely  separated  from  histor- 
ical puritanism,  and  finds  its  expression  in  the  literature 
of  a  people  which  is  rising  to  great  political  might.1  But 
those  who  have  been  the  masters  of  political  science,  and 
it  has  perhaps  fewer  great  names  than  any  other  science, 
all  repeat  this  conception.  Milton  says,  "  A  nation  ought 
to  be  but  as  one  huge  Christian  personage,  one  mighty 
growth  or  stature  of  an  honest  man,  as  big  and  compact 
in  virtue  as  in  body,  for  look,  what  the  ground  and  causes 
are  of  single  happiness  to  one  man,  the  same  ye  shall  find 
them  to  a  whole  state."  2  Burke  says,  "  The  state  ought 
not  to  be  considered  as  a  partnership  agreement  to  be 
taken  up  for  a  little  temporary  interest  and  dissolved  at  the 
fancy  of  the  parties.  It  is  to  be  looked  on  with  other  rev- 
erence, because  it  is  not  a  partnership  in  things  subservi- 
ent to  the  gross  animal  existence  of  a  temporary  and 
perishable  nature.  It  is  a  partnership  in  all  science ;  a 
partnership  in  all  art ;  a  partnership  in  every  virtue  and 
in  all  perfection."  3  Shakespeare  says,  — 

"  There  is  a  mystery  —  with  whom  relation 
Durst  never  meddle  —  in  the  soul  of  state ; 
Which  hath  an  operation  more  divine 
Than  breath  or  pen  can  give  expressure  to."  4 

1  See  Rothe's  Theologische  Ethik,  vol.  iii.  sec.  ii.  p.  900.      Stahl's  PhilosopMe 
des  Rechts,  vol.  ii.  sec.  2,  p.  181.     Bluntschli's  Allgem  Stats  Rechts,  vol.  i.  p.  140. 

2  Milton's  Reformation  in  England,  Preface  to  bk.  ii, 
8  Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution,  p.  368. 

*  Troilus  and  Cressida,  act  iii.  sc.  3. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE    SUBSTANCE  OF  THE  NATION  AS  DEFINED    IN    THEORIES. 

THE  conduct  of  affairs  in  the  nation  is  shaped  after 
the  conception  which  men  may  have  of  its  origin  and  end, 
and  yet  it  does  not  subsist  in  the  individual  and  arbitrary 
conception,  and  cannot  be  made  the  exponent  of  that.  It 
exists  in  its  necessary  conception,  and  every  divergence 
from  that  is  the  building  of  some  abstraction,  or,  as  the 
French  phrase  is,  "  in  the  air,"  and  through  vagueness 
will  result  in  feeble  action,  or,  through  defect,  in  negative 
action.  The  error  in  thought  can  involve  only  disaster 
in  fact. 

The  representations 'of  the  nation,  which  most  frequently 
recur  in  politics,  and  especially  in  its  later  phases,  are 
mainly  as  follows  :  — 

The  nation  is  represented  as  a  necessary  evil.  It  is  a 
sequence  of  the  evil  which  is  in  the  world,  and  is  incident 
to  that.  It  is  imposed  on  man  to  control  the  desires  and 
lusts,  and  to  curb  the  tendency  with  which  it  is  said  the 
inclination  of  his  nature  is  toward  evil.  It  is  made  neces- 
sary by  the  disorder  and  violence,  the  fraud  and  enmity 
of  men,  and  the  antagonism  of  self-interest,  and  is  itself  to 
be  endured  as  only  a  less  evil  than  these,  and  to  lose  its 
power  as  they  abate,  and  to  cease  with  their  termination. 
It  is  simply  repressive,  and  is  the  restraint  which  is  neces- 
sary to  check  the  evil  drift  of  the  world.  This  defines  the 
state  as  the  resultant  of  the  existence  of  wrong,  and  neces- 
sitated by  that ;  it  is  to  be  apprehended  only  as  involved 


THE  SUBSTANCE  OF  THE  NATION.         25 

in  the  sequence  of  evil,  a  manifestation  .of  an  estate  of  sin 
and  misery. 

This  makes  a  destructive  force  the  constructive  cause  of 
society.  But  evil  in  its  necessary  character  is  not  forma- 
tive. It  creates  nothing  and  produces  nothing,  it  only 
consumes  and  destroys.  It  has  in  itself  no  elements  of 
order,  and  can  bring  forth  none.  It  holds  no  type  after 
which  things  are  to  be  fashioned,  but  only  changes  and  dis- 
turbs them.  Therefore  the  nation,  its  unity  and  order 
and  progress,  cannot  be  derivative  from  evil  and  an  evil 
condition. 

Government,  which  is  the  central  organization  of  the 
nation,  is  im^aii  evil.  Its  substance  is  in  itself  good, 
and  is  implicit  in  the  conception  of  the  good.  Law,  which 
is  the  ground  and  expression  of  its  authority,  is  in  its  ulti- 
mate apprehension  the  manifestation  of  the  divine  will,  as 
has  been  said  of  it  in  imperishable^words,  "  Its  home  is  the 
bosom  of  God,  and  its^voice  is  the  hl^fcony  of  the  world."  l 
And  freedom,  which  in  the  nation  is  constituted  in  law,  is 
the  sphere  of  the  normal  development  of  man.  And  the 
nation  is  not  a  mere  negation,  only  a  restriction  of  evil  ten- 
dencies and  an  impediment  to  evil  courses,  as  this  theory 
assumes.  It  has  a  positive  character  and  content.  It  is 
the  manifestation  of  the  life  of  the  organic  people,  after  a 
moral  order,  and  in  the  institution  of  justice  and  of  rights. 
It  is  a  constructive  power  in  history.  It  is  not  a  local  and 
temporary  expedient,  and  its  elements  are  not  those  which 
the  scientific  culture  of  another  and  a  later  age  may  set 
aside.  It  is  not  a  fetter  and  a  burden  imposed  upon  the 
race,  in  an  evil  necessity,  which  it  may  gradually  come  in 

1  Mr.  Brownson  says  of  government,  "  It  would  have  been  necessary,  if 
man  had  not  sinned,  and  for  the  good  as  well  as  for  the  bad.  The  law  was  pro- 
mulged  in  the  Garden,  while  man  retained  his  innocence.  It  exists  in  heaven 
as  well  as  on  earth,  and  in  heaven  in  its  perfectness."  — The  American  Republic, 
p.  18. 

"  The  nation  is  not  only  revealed  as  ffie  power  in  conflict  with  evil,  but  even 
the  beginning  (Paradise)  looked  toward  a  development  into  a  perfect  kingdom." 
—  Stahl,  Philosophic  des  Rechts^  vol.  ii.  sec.  ii.  p.  81. 


26  THE  NATION. 

its  progress  to  discard,  and  from  which  it  may  be  ultimately 
wholly  emancipated.  It  is  itself  the  condition  of  progress, 
and  in  its  course  there  is  the  striking  off  of  fetters,  and 
the  deliverance  from  burdens,  and  a  constantly  increasing 
freedom. 

The  representation  of  the  nation  as  a  necessary  evil,  ap- 
pears through  many  periods,  and  in  many  forms.  It  was 
the  prevalent  notion  of  the  mediaeval  age.  It  arises  often 
from  a  want  of  satisfaction  in  the  merely  jural  and  eco- 
nomic representation  of  the  state.  The  spirit  of  man  de- 
mands something  more  and  better  than  that,  his  hope 
and  purpose  look  to  something  ampler  and  worthier,  and 
that  offers  no  sphere  in  which  he  can  fulfill  his  vocation 
or  unfold  his  energies,  and  when  thus  conceived  it  comes 
to  be  set  aside  as  a  necessary  evil  in  the  evil  of  this  world, 
and  also  as  transient  in  its  nature.1 

l  Mr.  Calhoun  makes  this  conception  the  base  of  his  political  structure.  He 
defines  the  end  of  government,  "  to  repress  violence  and  preserve  order."  He 
says,  "  The  powers  must  be  administered  by  men  in  whom,  like  others,  the 
individual  are  stronger  than  the  social  feelings,"  and  therefore,  "since  they  may 
be  used  as  instruments  of  oppression,  that  by  which  this  is  prevented  is  called 
constitution."  While  this  is  the  postulate  of  the  argument  of  Mr.  Calhoun's 
essay,  it  is  significant  that  he  should  write,  in  one  of  its  first  sentences,  "  To  man 
the  Creator  has  assigned  the  social  and  the  political  state  as  best  adapted  to 
develop  the  great  capacities  and  faculties,  intellectual  and  moral,  with  which  he 
has  endowed  him"  but  the  thought  lies  upon  the  page,  and  has  no  further 
consideration,  nor  does  it  enter  into  his  construction  of  the  state.  Calhoun's 
Works,  vol.  i.  pp.  7, 15,  52.  Mr.  Spencer  is  the  most  recent  advocate  of  this 
theory,  and  presents  it  in  its  extremest  shape.  *  He  says,  "  Nay,  indeed,  have 
we  not  seen  that  government  is  essentially  immoral  ?  Is  it  not  the  offspring 
of  evil,  bearing  about  it  all  the  marks  of  its  parentage?  Does  it  not  exist 
because  crime  exists?  Is  it  not  strong,  or,  as  we  say,  despotic  where  crime  is 
great?  Is  there  not  more  liberty,  that  is,  less  government,  as  crime  diminishes? 
and  must  not  government  cease,  when  crime  ceases,  for  very  lack  of  objects  on 
which  to  perform  its  functions?  Morality  cannot  recognize  it.  "  —  Social  Statics, 
p.  230.  He  says  again,  "  Government  is  a  necessary  evil  "  (Social  Statics,  p. 
25),  to  terminate  with  the  evil  which  is  assumed  as  the  ground  of  its  exist- 
ence; "it  is  a  mistake  to  assume  that  government  must  last  forever.  The  insti- 
tution marks  a  certain  stage  of  civilization,  is  natural  to  a  particular  phase  of 
human  development.  It  is  not  essential,  but  incidental.  As  amongst  the  Bush- 
men we  find  a  state  antecedent  to  government,  so  may  there  be  one  in  which  it 
shall  have  become  extinct."  —  Social  Statics,  p.  24.  It  would  scarcely  be  neces- 
sary to  notice  these  statements  of  this  theory,  but  if  they  be  received  in  th« 


> 

THE   SUBSTANCE   OF   THE  NATION//    /»          27 

The  nation  is  represented  as  an  historical  fyccident.   "'It  /j 
is  the  outward  circumstance  of  th$  life 'of  man'i^jJp^n  the        } 
earth  ;  it  is  a  phenomenal  phase  of  society,  ttie/fpr.m  Whfclj  . 
society  in  its  manifold  nature,  in  some  places  antl/ £ome     Oy 
ages  may  assume. 

But  the  nation  has  not  been  in  history  an  indifferent, 
phase  of  action  in  certain  places,  and  a  transient  inci 
dent  of  certain  ages,  which  this  implies.  As  there  is  in  the 
nature  of  man  the  evidence  that  he  is  constituted  for  the 
nation,  so  also  his  normal  development  has  been  in  it,  in 
the  historical  life  of  humanity. 

It  is  not  the  characteristic  of  a  single  epoch,  as  would 
follow  if  it  were  only  an  incident  in  the  life  of  the  race,  but 
it  is  a  power  in  the  continuous  development  of  history.     It  \ 
is  no  ephemeral  mode  of  existence,  and  instead  of  being 
the  incident,  it  is  the  substance  of  history, 

It  is  not  the  circumstance  of  the  existence  of  man  upon 
the  earth,  but  in  it  there  is  the  determinate  power  in  which 
man  controls  circumstance,  and  maintains  through  events 
the  persistent  expression  of  his  aim.  It  is  formed  in  the 
assertion  of  a  dominion  over  the  external  world.  Its  prog- 
ress is  as  it  lifts  man  above  the  force  of  circumstance 
and  the  subjection  to  circumstance.  Man  is  weak  and  de- 
pendent as  he  is  isolated  or  withdrawn  from  it.  It  is 
not  the  occurrence  of  some  fortuitous  scene,  to  come  and 
go,  in  the  unlimited  play  of  events,  some  single  strand 
which  is  caught  and  woven  in  the  loom  of  the  years,  with 

thought  of  a  people,  they  must  work  inevitable  disaster,  alike  to  the  individual 
and  the  nation,  and  their  repetition  of  the  mediaeval  conception  of  the  state, 
which  in  that  age  was  always  given  with  a  certain  sadness  and  regretful  sense 
of  loss,  involves  in  this  age  wider  consequences.   The  characteristics  of  ;'  the  state 
among  the  Bushmen  antecedent  to  government,"  are  not  further  described,  and 
there  is  no  positive  presentation  of  facts  on  which  to  rest  these  "  other  stages 
of  civilization,"  which  also  were  rid  of  government,  whose  existence  the  writer 
assumes,  except  as  the  "  state  among  the  Bushmen,"  may  be  also  illustrative  of  — 
them.     When  these  assumptions  are  prwented,  with  the  pretension  of  a  school  — 
that  it  always  keeps  a  foothold  of  facts  and  is  characterized  by  a  scientific  exact-     -»*- 
ness,  they  may  justify  some  surprise.  X 

fl 


28  THE  NATION. 

their  ceaseless  changes,  and  then  not  to  appear  again,  but 
it  is  the  fabric  in  which  events  are  wrought. 

This  representation  of  the  nation  apprehends  it  as  only 
an  apparent  order ;  not  an  end  in  itself,  but  incidental  to 
the  attainment  of  some  other  and  separate  ends  ;  only  a 
scaffolding  for  some  interior  structure,  which  it  is  to  sup- 
port, or  an  association  for  the  advancement  of  the  private 
ends  of  the  individual.  But  in  its  vocation  and  the  moral 
obligation  which  it  cannot  transfer  nor  evade,  there  is  the 
condition  of  an  immediate  moral  being.  It  has  not  the  indi- 
vidual in  himself  and  his  advancement  as  its  separate  and 
special  end,  but  in  its  aim  as  the  universal,  it  constantly 
elevates  the  individual  above  a  separate  and  special  end. 
It  has  a  life  which  may  call  for  the  sacrifice  of  the  life  of 
the  individual  in  the  higher,  the  universal  aim.  There  is 
a  false  egoism,  which  has  its  root  in  selfishness,  in  this 
representation  of  the  subordination  of  the  state  to  private 
ends,  whatever  their  disguise  and  whether  they  be  of  a 
so-called  spiritual,  or  of  a  temporal  character,  and  the 
necessary  sequence  of  the  principle  it  asserts  is  the  dis- 
solution of  society. 

-  In  this  representation  it  is  common  to  regard  the  organ- 
ization of  government  as  identical  with  the  nation,  and  to 
limit  it  to  that  conception.  Thus  the  dynasty  or  the  mu- 
nicipality, the  tribal,  or  patrimonial,  or  imperial  power, 
may  be  regarded  as  substantially  the  nation.  But  it  is 
not  comprehended  in  the  simple  fact  of  government. 
There  is  government  in  the  family,  and  yet  the  family  is 
not  the  state.  There  may  be*  the  recognition  of  and  the 
subordination  to  authority,  in  an  association  which  is  or- 
ganized for  plunder,  as  in  the  brigand's  band  or  on  the 
pirate's  ship.1  When  the  nation  is  apprehended  as  only 
an  external  order,  the  recognition  of  a  certain  authority, 
in  a  certain  locality,  and  by  a  certain  association  of  men, 

1 "  Quae  est  enim  civitas  ?  Omnisne  etiam  ferorum  et  imraanium  V  Omnisne 
fugitivorum  ac  latronum  congregata  unum  in  locum  multitude?  Certe  negfc- 
bis."  —  Cicero,  De  RepubUca,  bk.  ii.  ch.  2. 


THE   SUBSTANCE   OF   THE  NATION.  29 

then  it  may  indeed  be  assumed  as  the  transient  circum- 
stance in  a  continually  changing  condition,  but  there  can 
be  for  human  society  no  reel  stability. 

The  nation  is  represented  as  a  jural  society.  Its  sole 
object  is  the  maintenance  of  private  interests  and  the  pro- 
tection of  private  rights.  Its  end  is  effected  in  the  keep- 
ing of  the  peace  among  a  certain  number  of  men  in  a  cer- 
tain locality.  Its  process  is  a  system  of  police.  It  is  a 
vast  constabulary  force,  which  is  to  prevent  disorder  within 
certain  limits  of  the  earth.  The  nation  is  only  a  judge 
and  warden,  and  that  government  is  best  which  governs 
least.  Thus  one's  country  is  a  larger  bailiwick,  whose 
boundaries  some  convenience  of  administration  has  de- 
termined ;  the  father-land  is  the  circuit  of  the  judge  and 
the  sheriff.  The  exponent  of  national  power  is  the  tip- 
stave.  To  be  a  citizen,  to  be  the  member  of  a  nation,  has 
no  other  significance  than  a  certain  relation,  in  which 
each  is  held  and  bound  over  for  the  keeping  of  the  peace. 
The  only  association  recognized  in  the  state  is  a  jural  re- 
lation, and  the  nation  is  only  a  jurxal  society. 

This  conception  is  obviously  imperfect,  and  while,  as 
R.  von  Mohl  says,  it  is  so  narrow  as  scarcely  to  need  crit- 
icism, it  is  yet  constantly  recurrent.  The  state  certainly 
has  to  secure  the  civil  order  of  society,  to  repress  violence 
and  to  punish  crime  ;  but  this  is  not  its  sole  nor  its  whole 
end.  Every  state,  simply  to  maintain  its  existence,  em- 
braces a  wider  sphere  and  exercises  larger  powers.  The 
aim  of  society,  in  its  most  meagre  form,  could  not  be  ac- 
complished in  so  contracted  a  principle. 

This  also  regards  the  maintenance  of  the  necessary  rela- 
tions of  the  individual,  and  private  rights  and  interests,  as 
the  end  of  the  state.  Its  law  is  in  necessity,  and  in  the 
relations  which  conform  to  this  law,  but  it  subsists  no 
longer  in  a  real  freedom.  It  is  no  longer  the  growth  of 
national  character  and  spirit.  There  is  no  organic  and 


30  THE  NATION. 

moral  continuity,  and  its  citizenship  is  no  longer  a  living 
relation.  There  is  no  principle  in  which  it  can  animate 
the  spirit  of  man,  and  it  can  awaken  no  reverence  for  the 
past  nor  hope  for  the  future.  It  cannot  inspire  the  gen- 
erous sacrifice  of  the  present  to  the  future,  by  which  alone 
the  life  of  nations  is  conserx  jd.  There  is  no  place  for  the 
self-devotion  which  is  the  source  of  public  spirit,  and  in  its 
whole  scope  there  is  no  ground  for  public  rights  and  public 
duties. 

This  also  confounds  civil  and  political  rights,  or  rather 
the  whole  province  of  political  rights  is  denied,  and  the 
nation  is  limited  to  the  definition  of  the  civil  organization. 
It  is  constituted  only  of  persons  in  private  relations,  and 
only  for  their  protection  in  these  relations.  But  this  is 
inconsistent  with  the  essential  constitution  of  the  political 
people,  and  there  is  no  principle  in  which  it  can  apprehend 
the  people  as  organic,  and  therefore  as  invested  with  po- 
litical power,  in  the  will  of  the  political  whole. 

This  conception  is  also  destitute  of  an  historical  foun  da- 
tion,  and  does  not  serve  to  describe  any  historical  nation. 
It  is  a  low  and  imperfect  representation  which  fails  to  de- 
fine the  life  of  the  people  in  its  organic  unity  and  organized 
relations,  and  makes  no  history  possible  in  its  own  limita- 
tion. There  is  no  ground  for  an  historical  unity  and 
continuity.  The  historical  course  of  every  nation  has 
'elements  which  transcend  it.  It  fails  to  represent,  for 
instance,  the  life  of  Greece  or  Rome,  of  England  or  France, 
and  eliminates  from  their  history  all  their  spirit  and  all 
that  gives  dignity  and  grandeur  to  their  action. 

This  proposition  has  for  its  postulate  necessarily  a  false 
conception,  both  of  the  origin  of  society  as  only  an  associa- 
tion of  men,  and  of  the  nature  of  men  as  impelled  only 
by  selfish  interests  and  toward  selfish  ends  ;  and  when  it 
reaches  its  conclusion,  as  it  merges  the  nation  into  the  civil 
corporation,  it  indicates  the  beginning  of  a  false  civilization. 

The  highest  organization  of  the   civil  corporation,  and 


THE  SUBSTANCE  OF  THE  NATION.          31 

the  most  perfect  jural  system,  would  still  not  satisfy  the 
spirit  of  a  people.  It  could  not  attain  toward  the  destina- 
tion of  those  powers  which  are  immanent  in  humanity. 
There  is  in  it  the  apprehension  of  no  moral  relationship, 
and  in  its  last  analysis  it  could  apprehend  its  members  only 
as  plaintiff  and  defendant.  The  long  result  of  human  so- 
ciety it  would  represent  in  the  institution  of  a  civil  court, 
and  the  close  of  history  in  twelve  men  sitting  in  a  jury- 
box.  Its  final  achievement  it  would  reduce  to  a  codifica- 
tion of  the  laws.  The  better  conception  of  society  and  of 
the  individual  perishes,  and  the  largeness  in  the  fore- 
thought of  the  statesman,  and  the  heroism  in  the  devotion 
of  the  soldier  have  no  place  in  it,  but  its  representative 
is  only  the  civil  lawyer. 

The  civil  corporation  presumes  the  existence  of  the  po- 
litical people,  that  is,  the  nation  in  which  it  subsists ;  and 
it  has  in  itself  no  element  of  continuity,  nor  even  of  con- 
tinuous action.  There  is  no  fact  more  significant  than  that 
the  life  of  the  Roman  citizen  had  lost  all  its  strength  and 
nobleness,  when  it  came  to  be  apprehended  under  rela- 
tions and  distinctions  defined  only  by  the  civil  system. 
There  was  no  longer  in  Roman  citizenship  a  vital  and  a 
moral  spirit,  and  the  individual  discipline  which  had  been 
the  secret  of  her  conquest,  and  her  vast  organization,  per- 
ished. It  was  in  the  decadence  of  Rome,  and  in  the  later 
days  of  the  empire,  that  the  thoughts  of  the  greatest  of  her 
sons  turned  only  to  the  civil  law,  to  its  system  and  its  cod- 
ification. 

It  allows  no  sphere  for  the  maintenance  in  it  of  the 
relationships  of  life.  They  cannot  in  their  normal  concep- 
tion subsist  in  it,  and  when  the  nation  is  apprehended  as 
only  a  civil  corporation,  an  administration  of  the  police, 
then  the  family,  which  is  organic  and  is  in  itself  sacred, 
is  elevated  above  it,  only  at  last,  in  its  necessary  relation 
to  it,  to  be  reduced  to  th6  same  low  conception.  The 
nation,  merely  as  a  society  of  jural  relations,  cannot  com- 


32  THE  NATION. 

prehend  the  family  thus  as  organic  and  as  sacred,  and 
.  whenever  the  one  has  been  represented  as  a  civil  corpo- 
ration, the  other  has  come  to  be  held  as  only  a  civil  con- 
tract. 

This  proposition  has  been  assumed  in  the  assertion  of 
a  necessary  separation  of  the  moral  and  the  legal,  and 
the  identity  of  the  nation  with  the  latter.  It  is  correct  in 
the  assertion  of  a  distinction  of  the  moral  and  the  legal, 
and  the  former  has  never  in  the  latter  its  perfect  expres- 
sion nor  its  comprehension ;  but  the  proposition  assumes 
their  isolation,  so  that  in  the  state  the  conception  of  the 
one  excludes  the  other.  This  has  its  illustration,  and  has 
obtained  in  some  respects  its  more  recent  influence, 
through  the  aphorism  of  Kant.1  Kant  represented  the 
state  as  deriving  its  content  and  its  powers  from  a  formal 
law,  and  defined  it  as,  "the  association  of  men  under  a 
system  of  laws."  He  asserted  that  the  moral  cannot  be 
external,  since  it  requires  that  duty  shall  spring  from  the 
conscience  which  is  within  man,  and  proceed  through  an 
inner  motive,  while  the  order  of  the  state  regards  only  the 
conformance  of  the  external  act  to  the  law,  and  to  it  there 
is  attached  also  compulsion,  the  physical  force,  which  be- 
longs to  the  authority  of  the  state.  This  was  the  argument 
for  the  definition  of  the  state  as  formal,  not  organic  and 
moral,  and  for  its  representation  as  only  an  external  order. 
It  is  correct  in  the  assertion  that  the  conscience  is  within 
man,  and  that  the  inner  life  is  beyond  the  invasion  of 
physical  force,  and  over  it  the  state  has  not,  nor  has  any 
save  only  God  control,  but  with  this  it  does  not  follow  for 
one  moment  that  the  external  act  must  be  separated  from 
the  conscience,  nor  that  the  external  order  has  no  moral 
substance,  nor  that  the  formal  law  has  no  moral  content 
and  no  moral  end.  The  physical  force,  also,  which  this 
asserts  as  existent  in  the  state,  must,  as  a  right,  have  a 
higher  sanction  than  this  allows,  since  there  is  no  ground 

i  Kant,  Rechtslehre,  sec.  45. 


[THEJSUBgTXHCE^OF  THE  NATION.   \  33 

on  which  a  number  of  men  are  justified  in  the  act  itself,  in 
compelling  one  man.  The  state  also  acknowledges  as 
legally  binding  without  express  enactment,  a  moral  rela- 
tion and  obligation,  and  the  primary  obligations,  for  in- 
stance, of  patriotism,  which  in  no  state  have  been  defined 
in  its  system  of  laws,  and  cannot  be  so  defined,  are  neces- 
sarily assumed  and  asserted  by  every  state.  In  this  argu- 
ment, also,  the  laws  have  necessarily  no  other  content  than 
that  which  is  derived  from  the  external  relations  of  life, 
but  if  the  state  is  apprehended  only  in  these  relations,  it 
becomes  merely  an  external  and  formal  order,  and  in  the 
institution  of  these  relations  as  external  and  formal  it 
would  fail  of  their  end,  since  they  presume  a  moral  unity 
and  obligation.  And  the  legal  becomes  something  poor 
and  empty,  when  it  is  separated  from  the  moral ;  and  the 
law,  when  its  invisible  sanctions  in  the  conscience  are 
withdrawn,  becomes  only  the  contrivance  of  legislators, 
and  society  only  the  scheme  of  politicians.  The  very 
conception  of  law  as  the  affirmation  of  justice,  and  its  uni- 
versal aim,  is  lost  sight  of  when  it-is  apprehended  as 
existent  only  for  the  individual,  and  to  subserve  his  private 
end.  It  has,  indeed,  for  the  individual,  no  such  egoistic 
place. 

This,  also,  necessarily  excludes  all  consciousness  of  a 
divine  obligation  in  the  nation  to  execute  justice  and  to 
punish  crime,  to  repress  violence  and  to  maintain  order. 
The  state  is  merged  again  into  the  civil  corporation,  and  in 
the  assumption  of  the  isolation  of  the  legal  and  the  moral, 
and  the  subsequent  foundation  of  the  nation  in  the  merely 
legal,  society  becomes  only  the  form  of  legists,  and  its 
action  the  precedent  of  a  political  pharisaism. 

The  nation  is  represented  as  an  economic  society.  It  is 
a  temporary  organization  for  the  promotion  of  the  physical 
well-being  of  man  ;  it  exists  only  for  the  satisfaction  of 
certain  physical  wants ;  it  has  its  ground  in  the  necessities 
which  arise  in  the  coexistence  of  men. 


34  THE  NATION. 

This  is  the  merely  economic  state  ;  its  law  is  in  neces- 
sity ;  its  relation  has  a  material  basis  ;  its  existence  is  con- 
tingent upon  the  securance  of  certain  temporary  ends. 
The  bond  by  which  it  is  attached,  is  in  production  and 
exchange,  and  its  permanence  is  to  provide  security  for 
material  accumulations.  The  nation  is  apprehended  only 
as  a  joint  stock  concern,  a  board  of  trade,  an  insurance 
shop,  or  a  produce  exchange.  The  continuity  in  which  it 
unites  the  generations,  is  the  inheritance  of  their  accumu- 
lated capital  —  contracts  and  wills.  The  record  of  its 
achievement  is  in  tables  of  commercial  profit  and  loss,  and 
the  relation  of  its  members  is  defined  by  regulations  in 
bargain  and  sale.  It  exists  for  the  protection  of  persons 
and  property,  and  is,  at  the  most,  only  the  external  and 
temporary  form  in  which  some  interior  and  spiritual  struc- 
ture is  built,  but  it  has  in  itself  no  corresponding  character, 
and  no  apprehension  of  the  purpose  and  spirit  of  that,  and 
no  enduring  principle  nor  universal  aim. 

It  is  true  that  the  nation  has  in  its  scope  the  organi- 
zation of  the  civil  order,  in  the  protection  of  persons  ,and 
property,  but  this  is  not  comprehensive  of  it.  There  is  to 
this  the  same  objection  which  applies  to  the  representation 
of  the  state  as  simply  the  jural  society  :  it  is  obviously  de- 
ficient. It  fails  to  define  any  historical  nation,  and  there  is 
none  in  its  limitation  which  could  find  a  place  in  history. 
There  is  no  people  which  has  attained  an  historical  exist- 
ence, but  it  has  necessarily  held  a  moral  purpose  and  aim, 
beyond  any  material  interest,  and  in  the  crisis  of  its  history, 
it  has  been  called  to  sacrifice  material  interests  that  the 
nation  might  live,  and  has  maintained  its  calling  in  the  re- 
jection of  apparent  material  advantages. 

This  proposition  fails,  also,  since  it  necessarily  involves 
the  formation  of  society  after  a  selfish  principle,  or  in  self- 
interest.  There  is  not  in  this  a  formative  social  energy. 
There  can  be  no  unity,  since  the  principle  it  assumes  is 
the  very  root  of  division.  It  can  issue  only  in  disintegra- 


THE  SUBSTANCE  OF  THE  NATION.         35 

tion  through  self-antagonisms,  and  the  result  in  fact,  as  it 
is  the  necessary  sequence  of  the  principle,  is  the  dissolu- 
tion of  society. 

There  is  not  in  this  assumption  the  condition  of  per- 
manence ;  and  when  the  security  of  material  interests  has 
become  the  supreme  end,  it  indicates  the  decay  of  the 
state.  If  it  has  failed  to  recognize  a  principle  of  righteous- 
ness, that  still  has  not  swerved  to  allow  a  way  for  it,  nor 
fallen  to  be  passed  over  in  its  streets. 

This  conception  does  not  correspond  to  the  apprehension 
of  the  nation,  in  the  consciousness  of  men.  It  divests  its 
life  of  all  sacredness,  and  its  authority  of  all  obligation. 
There  is  no  ground  left  to  the  people  of  reverence  for  its 
ancestors  or  of  hope  for  its  children.  There  is  for  justice 
no  solemnity.  It  cannot  call  forth  that  devotion  from  its 
sons,  whose  measure  is  the  pledge  of  life  and  fortune,  and 
their  sacrifice  would  be  the  subversion  of  the  end  ascribed 
to  it.  It  has  no  place  for  the  courage  of  the  soldier,  nor 
the  wisdom  of  the  statesman,  nor  even  for  the  love  of  its 
*  children,  but  exists  for  the  promotion  of  trade,  and  is  the 
copartnership  of  men  in  a  secular  concern. 

But  the  defect  in  the  limitation  of  this  conception  is 
apparent.  The  nation  has  elements  which  are  not  deter- 
mined in  its  economy.  It  is  not  exhausted  in  the  sched- 
ules of  its  produce  and  exchange  ;  its  unity  is  not  in 
material  interests  ;  its  history  is  written  in  other  books 
than  the  tables  of  its  census ;  its  capital  is  other  than  the 
centre  of  its  trade. 

This  proposition  has  had  a  various  support,  and  has  de- 
termined the  position  of  the  most  opposite  parties,  and  has 
united  —  each  holding  the  state  in  moral  indifference  —  the 
secularist  and  the  ecclesiast.  The  latter  has  assumed  for 
himself  alone  the  work  of  righteousness  on  the  earth,  to 
result  often  in  indifference  to  actual  righteousness,  and  the 
former  has  denied  the  presence  and  the  power  of  righteous- 
ness in  history.  The  inference  of  each  has  been  the  being 


30  THE  NATION. 

of  the  nation,  as  only  an  association  of  individuals  in  an 
external  order,  for  certain  temporary  ends ;  an  existence 
subsisting  only  in  the  secular,  and  each,  therefore,  has  re- 
garded its  course  as  profane,  and  the  crises  of  its  existence 
too  often  have  seen  their  latent  or  avowed  alliance. 

The  principles  of  economy  have  a  common  ground  and 
application  ;  the  laws  of  commerce  and  exchange  are  as 
wide  as  the  seas  on  which  their  ships  sail.  They  are  laws 
which  are  applied  by  every  nation,  but  they  are  not 
immanent  in  the  organism  of  the  nation,  nor  determined  in 
its  individual  existence.  Thus  the  nation  may  form  a 
treaty  of  reciprocity  in  trade,  but  it  can  form  none  of 
reciprocity  in  political  rights  ;  for  the  nation,  as  an  organic 
and  moral  power,  is  subsistent  in  these.  There  is  nothing 
in  the  principles  of  political  economy  which  can  become  the 
ground  of  the  separate  life  of  the  nation.1 

This  conception,  in  its  premise  and  conclusion,  corre- 
sponds to  the  preceding ;  and  the  characteristic  of  all  is  the 
identity  of  the  nation  with  the  civil  corporation,  and  the 
rejection  of  its  organic  and  moral  being.  These  theories 
become  the  source  not  of  the  constructive  energy,  but 
involve  the  elements  of  the  dismemberment  of  society. 
They  can  apprehend  the  nation  only  as  the  field  of  indi- 
vidual ambition,  and  selfish  interests,  and  private  ends. 

1  "  Die  burgerliche  gesellschaft  rein  als  solche,  ist  eine  Kosmopolitin."  — 
Rothe,  Theologische  Ethik,  vol.  ii.  p.  123. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE   ORIGIN    OF   THE    NATION    AS  DEFINED   IN   THEORIES. 

THE  conception  of  the  origin  of  the  nation  is  necessarily 
presumed  in  the  conception  of  its  unity  and  its  substance. 
They  alike  shape  the  action  of  men  in  the  conduct  of 
aifairs,  and  there  has  been  in  modern  history  no  more 
manifest  illustration  of  the  relation  between  the  thought 
and  the  work  of  a  people.  The  response  has  been  given 
in  various  theories,  to  the  inquiry,  Whence  does  the  nation, 
that  is,  the  organization  of  society,  derive  its  being,  and  its 
unity,  and  the  authority  in  its  government,  and  its  rights, 
and  its  powers. 

It  is  not  the  beginning  of  the  nation,  in  its  historical  cir- 
cumstance, which  is  the  object  of  this  inquiry  ;  and  this  has 
been  the  same,  in  no  separate  nations.  Their  inception, 
in  their  external  phases,  has  been  as  varied  as  the  infinite 
life  of  history.  The  historical  beginning  may  be,  for  in- 
stance, in  the  growth  of  a  family,  and  the  accession  of 
other  families,  or  in  the  planting  of  a  colony,  or  in  the 
migration  of  a  race,  and  so  on.  But  there  is  in  this  only 
the  incident  of  their  historical  inauguration,  and  we  do  not 
attain  to  the  origin  of  the  nation,  nor  of  its  unity,  nor  the 
authority  in  its  government,  nor  its  rights  and  powers. 
The  characteristic  of  these  various  propositions  in  review 
is  their  lack  of  consistence  with  the  necessary  conception 
of  the  nation ;  they  are  mere  abstractions,  and  their  worth 
is  only  in  their  illustration  of  the  necessary  conception. 

It  is  said  that  the  nation  Has  its  origin  in  the  development 
of  the  family :  the  family  is  the  unit  of  human  society, 


38  THE  NATION. 

and  of  its  organic  process  in  the  nation  ;  and  in  the  expli- 
cation  of  the  family  the  nation  is  formed.  The  right  in 
which  the  government  of  the  nation  subsists,  is  then  also 
the  right  of  the  father,  and  the  people  who  form  the  nation 
are  related  to  the  government  as  its  children. 

It  is  true  that  the  family  is  the  unitary  form  of  soci- 
ety, but  it  is  not  therefore  the  only  form,  nor  determin- 
ative of  the  whole.  The  nation  is  not  the  continuation  of 
the  family,  nor  is  it  the  result  simply  of  its  extension,  noi 
is  it  in  its  form  necessarily  correspondent  to  it.  The 
organism  in  its  perfectness  cannot  transcend  its  germ  or 
spore,  and  the  family  in  its  widest  development  is  still  only 
the  family.  The  nation  is  not  necessarily  implanted  in  the 
family,  but  it  is  itself  an  organism ;  it  has  its  seed  in  itself, 
and  the  condition  of  its  development  is  in  its  own  organic 
unity  and  the  conformance  to  its  organic  law. 

The  rights  and  powers  which  belong  to  the  nation  also 
transcend  those  of  the  family.  The  authority  in  each  is 
different  from  the  other,  and  while  the  latter  in  its  form 
is  absolute,  and  obedience  is  rendered  to  it  as  to  an  im- 
perative, the  former  is  the  determination  of  the  organic 
will  as  law,  and  obedience  to  it  is  in  the  conscious  obliga- 
tion to  law.  The  rights  of  the  former,  also,  are  private 
rights,  and  its  power  is  private  power  as  an  estate,  as  it  is 
also  indeed  when  power  is  held  as  the  property  and  entail, 
of  a  patrimonial  prince  or  an  hereditary  aristocracy  ;  but 
in  the  nation  there  are  public  rights,  and  its  power  is 
vested  as  a  public  trust.  The  duties  of  the  family  are  also 
in  implicit  obedience  to  one,  who  is  the  father  of  the  house, 
but  in  the  nation  there  are  public  duties. 

The  right  which  is  the  ground  of  the  government  of 
the  family,  cannot  become  that  of  the  government  of  the 
nation.  The  government  of  the  family  rests  in  the  right 
of  the  father  to  govern  his  child,  but  this  is  necessarily 
limited  to  those  who  are  his  children,  and  cannot  justify 
the  extension  of  his  authority  over  those  who  are  not  his 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  NATION.  39 

children.  When  it  is  thus  extended  over  the  children  of 
another,  it  conflicts  with  the  unity  of  the  family  and  its 
authority  in  its  natural  head,  and  wherever,  in  the  organi- 
zation of  society,  it  has  been  transposed  beyond  its  natural 
limits,  it  has  sought  its  justification  in  a  civil  conception, 
and  in  some  legal  fiction,  as  that  of  adoption. 

The  nation  is  over  the  family,  and  the  latter  in  its  rela- 
tion to  it  is  subordinate.  The  father  is  responsible  to  the 
nation  for  the  manner  in  which  he  may  exercise  his 
authority  in  the  family,  and  the  relations  of  the  latter,  and 
the  obedience  of  the  child,  are  to  be  sustained  and  enforced 
by  its  law.  It  prescribes  the  age  when  the  child  may  be 
withdrawn  from  the  formal  authority  of  the  father,  and 
even  in  earlier  years  it  may  take  the  child  from  him  when 
it  deems  necessary,  and  institute  a  guardianship  over  it.1 
The  right  of  the  nation,  therefore,  instead  of  residing  in 
the  right  of  the  father,  holds  the  latter  in  subjection. 

This  proposition  is  often  stated  thus,  that  the  nation  has 
its  origin  in  the  association  of  certain  separate  families.  It 
is  derived  from  the  existence  of  a  certain  number  of  fami- 
lies, separated  from  all  others,  and  connected  by  marriage 
among  themselves.  But  this  does  not  necessarily  trans- 
cend the  limits  of  a  tribal  relation,  and  does  not  attain  to 
the  nation.  It  does  not  correspond  to  its  historical  institu- 
tion and  course.  It  is,  for  instance,  descriptive  of  the  ple- 
beian or  the  patrician  organization  in  Rome ;  but  neither 
of  these  was  Rome. 

The  evidence  of  history  is,  that  where  society  has  not 
passed  beyond  the  development  of  the  family,  there  has 
been  no  national  existence.  With  the  long  dynasties  and 
vast  populations  in  Asia,  where  society  has  adhered  to  the 
patriarchal  type,  there  has  been  no  nation,  no  citizenship, 

1  "  Society  must  suffer  if  the  child  is  allowed  to  grow  up  a  worthless  vaga- 
bond or  a  criminal,  and  has  a  right  to  intervene  both  in  behalf  of  itself  and  of 
the  child,  in  case  his  parents  neglectfto  train  him  up  in  the  nurture  and  admo- 
nition of  the  Lord,  or  are  training  him  up  to  be  a  thief,  a  drunkard,  a  murderer, 
a  pest  to  community."  —  Brownson,  The  American  Republic^  p.  41. 


40  THE  NATION. 

and  no  political  freedom.     Their  life  has  been  character- 
ized by  the  absence  of  political  spirit. 

There  is  yet  a  truth  which  underlies  this  conception  of 
the  origin  of  the  nation;  and  while  the  latter  does  not 
exist  in  identity  with  the  family,  and  is  not  formed  simply 
in  its  continuance,  there  is  still  a  necessary  connection  ; 
their  origin  and  end  is  not  diverse.  They  exist  in  an 
organic  and  moral  interrelation,  and  the  nation  has  its 
fruition  in  the  life  of  humanity,  in  the  universal  family.  It 
rests  in  the  unity  of  humanity  in  the  divine  fatherhood ; 
and  therefore  not  with  vague  and  unmeaning  phrases,  but 
as  its  end,  it  looks  to  the  brotherhood  of  men  and  the  fra- 
ternity of  the  nations,  in  the  order  of  the  world. 

It  is  said  that  the  nation  has  its  origin  in  mere  might :  it 
is  founded  upon  force  ;  it  is  the*  right  of  the  stronger,  as 
superior,  to  control  therweaker,  as  inferior. 

But  this  involves  the  immediate  contradiction  to  the  being 
of  the  nation.  The  nation  is  constructive  of  an  order  in 
law  and  freedom.  There  is  the  subjection  of  barren  force 
to  right,  and  authority  in  it  is  wrested  from  the  rude  hand 
of  power  and  placed  in  the  hand  of  justice,  and  the  con- 
quest of  civilization  is  in  the  manifestation  of  power  no 
longer,  as  mere  force,  but  in  the  recognition  of  a  law  of 
righteousness.  The  conception  is  subversive  of  rights,  for 
these  necessarily  presume  another  postulate  than  mere 
force. 

There  is  in  mere  force  no  element  from  which  progress 
can  be  evolved,  but  in  the  prospect  of  its  prevalence  there 
is  the  awakening  of  dread,  and  by  it  man  is  not  ennobled 
but  subdued.  There  is  the  rejection  of  a  principle  of  hu- 
manity. The  law  of  justice  is  unrecognized,  and  the  pro- 
cedure of  justice  is  leveled  beneath  its  iron  tread,  and  in  a 
condition  in  which  no  asylum  is  sacred  from  its  invasion, 
the  place  of  equity  is  usurped  by  its  authority. 

It  is  so  immediate  a  contradiction  to  the  being  of  the 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE  NATION.  41 

nation,  that  the  element  of  law  disappears,  and  there  is 
only  the  mandate  of  power,  and  the  relation  of  a  common 
citizenship  is  lost,  and  it  is  transformed  into  that  of  the 
master  and  the  slave. 

The  conception,  if  it  were  to  become  actual,  would  re- 
sult, not  in  the  institution  of  the  order,  but  in  the  constant 
disturbance  of  society.  The  right  of  the  stouter,  the  claim 
of  the  champion,  would  claim  a  trial,  and  as  in  the  lead  of 
a  herd  of  buffaloes,  it  would  involve  an  incessant  struggle. 
If  then  the  nation,  as  also  an  individual  or  family  or  race, 
in  any  moment  be  stronger  than  another,  it  is  at  once  the 
justification  of  the  conquest  and  the  subjugation  of  the 
weaker.  It  is  the  justification  of  absolutism,  but  also  of 
anarchy,  when  that  is  strong  enough  to  get  uppermost. 

This  proposition  has  sought  an  historical  justification,  but 
in  the  empty  and  superficial  notion  of  history  which  it  as- 
sumes, there  has  not  been  in  mere  physical  force  the  insti- 
tution of  the  nation.  The  external  circumstance  of  the 
nation  at  its  beginning,  has  not  infrequently  been  in  war, 
and  it  has  had  to  pass  through  a  struggle  for  existence  ;  but 
it  has  not  therefore  been  the  product  of  violence,  and  war 
has  been  the  incident  of  its  beginning,  only  as  war  was  in 
the  assertion  of  the  right.  The  right,  then,  has  not  beem 
born  of  force,  but  has  been  asserted  and  maintained  by| 
force.  If  force  has  been  severed  from  right  it  has  been/ 
not  the  inception  of  the  order  of  society,  but  its  devasta^ 
tion,  and  the  progress  of  civilization  has  been  in  the  in- 
creasing direction  of  physical  force  to  a  moral  end.  It  has 
not  been  strong  enough  to  regard  the  weakest  and  the 
lowliest  with  indifference,  and  in  its  course  the  things 
which  are  not  have  brought  to  naught  the  things  which 
are. 

Yet  there  is  also  a  truth  in  this  conception.  It  is  a  pro- 
test against  the  notion  which  apprehends  justice  as  abstract, 
and  denies  the  power  of  righteousness.  It  is  the  rejection 
of  a  spectral  idealism,  and  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that 


42  THE  NATION. 

i 

the  right  is  manifest,  and  is  not  the  dream  of  the  spirit, 
but  moves  to  the  conquest  of  the  world.  The  right  is  no 
faint  apparition,  and  no  flimsy  conceit,  but  a  power. 

It  is  said  that  the  nation  has  its  origin  in  some  instinct 
or  emotion  in  man :  there  is  some  element  in  his  nature  in 
the  action  of  which  he  is  impelled  toward  the  nation, 
and  it  exists  as  the  product  of  this  impulse.  It  is  the 
result  of  a  faculty  in  man,  and  is  constructed  as  the  bee 
builds  his  cell  and  the  beaver  his  dam.  This  capacity 
has  been  variously  described  as  a  special  faculty,  or  as 
sympathy  or  self-interest  or  fear,  or  as  their  common  ac- 
tion.  It  is  the  psychological  notion  of  the  origin  of  the 
nation. 

But  there  is  in  this  no  cause  from  which  the  being  of 
the  nation  can  be  derived.  The  nation  has  an  integral 
life,  a  positive  and  substantial  content,  and  can  have  its  or- 
igin and  foundation  in  no  subjective  phase.  It  is  as  far 
from  the  attainment  of  the  instinctive  and  emotional,  as  it 
is  from  the  reflective  and  volitional  act  of  the  individual. 

The  nation,  moreover,  cannot  have  its  origin  in  an 
impulse  or  emotion,  whose  action  is  necessary,  since  it  has 
a  moral  being,  and  it  exists  not  in  necessity  but  in  free- 
dom. 

There  is,  furthermore,  in  the  nation,  in  its  unity,  its 
rights  and  its  powers,  that  which  cannot  be  derived  from 
the  action  of  an  impulse  or  emotion.  There  is  no  power 
in  the  nature  of  man  which  could  result  in  the  right  to  gov- 
ernment which  is  in  a  political  order  and  is  over  men,  nor 
in  the  organization  of  law  and  freedom. 

As  the  self-government  of  the  individual  is  in  the  sub- 
jection of  impulse  to  the  determination  of  the  will,  in  con- 
formance  to  a  law  of  right,  the  principle  also  obtains  in  the 
government  of  the  people.  The  individual,  in  so  far  as  he 
makes  a  natural  impulse  his  master  and  obeys  that,  is  not 
free,  and  in  the  yielding  to  mere  impulse  there  is  the  deg- 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE  NATION.  43 

radation  of  man.  It  is  an  animal  existence,  and  the  action 
for  man  is  ignoble  and  unfree.  Civilization  which  is 
formed  in  the  development  of  the  state,  is  the  subjection 
of  the  impulses  and  passions  of  man  in  a  moral  order,  and 
is  the  elevation  above  the  rude  condition  of  untamed  and 
unrestrained  impulse  and  passion  which  hold  the  elements 
of  barbarism,  and  can  issue  only  in  violence  and  anarchy. 

Yet  there  is  in  this  proposition  also  a  truth,  and  while 
there  is  no  identity  in  the  spirit  in  which  man  is  related  to 
the  state  of  which  he  is  a  citizen,  and  the  instinct  with 
which  the  bee  or  the  bird  builds  his  cell  or  nest,  there  is 
yet  in  the  physical  order  of  nature  the  correspondence  to 
the  order  of  the  state.  It  is  also  a  protest  against  the 
merely  artificial  conception  in  politics,  and  illustrates  the 
truth  that  the  foundations  of  the  nation  are  laid  in  the  na- 
ture of  man,  and  it  is  formed  in  the  realization  of  his  true 
constitution. 

It  is  said  that  the  nation  has  its  origin  in  a  convention  : 
it  is  founded  in  a  contractual  law,  —  in  the  social  contract. 

The  historical  genesis  of  this  theory  has  a  separate  con- 
sequence, and  affords  the  significant  illustration  of  the 
strength  of  a  legal  fiction,  of  its  use,  and  then  also  of  its 
risk.  It  has  been  the  premise  for  the  most  opposite  schemes 
and  speculations  upon  society,  and  has  mustered  in  its  sup- 
port in  succeeding  periods  the  most  extreme  men  and 
parties,  serving  now  as  the  defense  of  the  established 
order,  and  again  as  the  summons  to  revolution.  It  has 
prevailed  in  countries  the  most  diverse  in  their  political 
spirit  and  constitution.  It  fills  the  political  literature  of  the 
last  two  centuries,  and  the  association  of  nearly  all  their 
great  names  with  it  indicates  alike  the  character  of  the 
age,  the  source  of  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of  its 
great  thinkers  and  workers.  In  Germany  it  claims  the 
names  of  Grotius,  of  Puffendorf,  of  Kant ;  in  England  it 
was  with  Hobbes  the  staff  of  authority,  and  with  Locke 


44  THE  NATION. 

the  shield  of  liberty  ;  but  its  clearest  assertion  was  in 
France,  and  its  highest  influence  was  obtained  through  the 
Oontrat  Social  of  Rousseau.  It  became  the  scholastic  tra- 
dition of  American  legal  and  political  theorists.  The  phase 
which  it  took  in  the  French  school  corresponds  more  nearly 
with  the  thought  of  Jefferson,  while  the  influence  of  the 
form  given  to  the  theory  by  Locke,  is  apparent  in  the  po- 
litical writings  of  Adams. 

The  inception  of  the  theory  has  been  traced  by  Mr. 
Maine,  to  an  imperfect  apprehension  of  the  Roman  form 
of  contracts,  denominated  Contracts  juris  gentium.  "  It 
was  not  until  the  language  of  the  Roman  lawyers  became 
the  language  of  an  age  which  had  lost  the  key  to  their 
mode  of  thought,  that  a  contract  of  the  law  of  nations  came 
to  be  distinctly  looked  upon  as  a  contract  known  to  man  in 
a  state  of  nature."  *  But  this  is  its  scholastic  and  legal  der- 
ivation, and  it  could-not  have  obtained  its  great  historical 
place,  had  there  not  been  involved  with  all  its  error  a  great 
truth  as  to  the  being  of  society  and  the  foundations  of  the 
state,  which  was  struggling  for  expression,  and  which  con- 
fronting precedents  in  the  confusion  of  the  age,  took  the 
form  of  a  legal  fiction.  The  discussion  is  mainly  of  inter- 
est as  an  historical  study.  It  has  a  certain  dryness  as  "a 
theory  which  though  nursed  into  importance  by  political  pas- 
sions, derived  all  its  sap  from  the  speculations  of  lawyers."  2 

The  theory  assumes  the  existence  of  man  in  a  pre-social 
condition,  which  is  described  as  the  state  of  nature.  The 
imagination  lays  the  boundaries  of  this  province,  and  then 
peoples  it  with  its  unlimited  conceits,  as  the  island  of  the 
Counselor,  in  "  The  Tempest."  From  its  occupancy  by  a 
joint  contract,  men  emerge  into  the  social  or  political  state  ; 
the  latter  is  thus  constituted  as  the  voluntary  association  of 
certain  individuals  who  enter  it  and  hold  it  as  the  contract- 
ing parties.  The  proposition  presumes  a  universal  appli- 
cation ;  the  origin,  and  in  a  certain  form  the  continuance 

1  Maine's  Ancient  Law,  p.  299.  2  Ibid. 


'THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE  NATION.  45 

of  all  states  that  have  been  in  all  ages,  are  referred  to  a 
social  contract. 

The  proposition  in  its  assumption  is  arbitrary,  and  pro- 
ceeding from  a  condition  which  is  unreal,  in  its  induction 
it  carries  the  state  necessarily  into  an  abstract  and  formal 
sphere,  —  and  because  it  has  its  inception  in  an  assumption, 
it  results  necessarily  in  a  political  system,  and  not  in  the 
nation  in  its  organic  being.  It  is  this  which  has  limited  its 
recent  advocacy  to  the  most  barren  of  political  schools, 
although  of  itself  not  the  most  dangerous,  —  a  technical 
school  of  lawyers.  It  has  assumed  the  existence  of  the 
precedent  condition,  which  is  called  the  state  of  nature. 
There  is  of  this  pre-social  state  no  report,  but  it  appears 
upon  the  chart  of  lawyers,  who  hold  authentic  tidings 
of  it,  and  within  it  find  stable  footing'.  It  advances,  then, 
through  a  continuous  series  of  assumptions,  each  of  which 
is  introduced  to  prop  the  preceding.  After  the  assump- 
tion of  this  state  of  nature,  there  is  assumed  to  exist  in.  it 
one  who  personates  the  natural  man,  a  fictitious  character, 
costumed  with  the  conceits  of  the  theory.  It  is, assumed 
that  there  is,  antecedent  to  the  existence  of  society,  the  rec- 
ognition of  some  law  of  society,  or  of  some  authority  in 
society,  and  on  this  exit  is  made  and  the  passage  is  bridged 
over  from  the  state  of  nature  to  the  social,  that  is,  the  civil 
and  the  political  state.  The  principle  or  the  authority  here 
consistently  assumed  is  that  of  a  contract  or  a  contract- 
ual law.  The  validity  of  a  constructive  consent  for  the 
parties  who  in  succession  are  to  be  bound  by  it,  and  by 
whom  it  is  to  be  continued,  is  then  also  assumed.  The 
resultant  in  the  social,  that  is,  the  civil  or  political  state, 
is  represented  as  the  artificial  state  whose  precedent  was 
the  natural  state,  which  man  has  left.  The  necessary  in- 
ference in  this  antithesis  is  allowed,  and  the  social  state 
is  represented  as  the  unnatural,  or  more  strictly,  the  abnor- 
mal condition  of  life. 

The  theory,  in  its  exposition  of  the  nature  of  man,  contra- 


46  THE  NATION. 

diets  at  its  outset  the  fact  which  is  the  postulate  of  Aris- 
totle, that  "  man  is  by  nature  a  political  being."  He  is  con- 
stituted for  society,  and  his  nature  has  its  development  in 
it.  There  is  in  his  being,  the  rudiments  of  the  state.  The 
fact  in  the  existence  of  man,  which  it  also  contradicts,  is 
that  he  has  no  existence  apart  from  society.  The  archaic 
condition  is  everywhere  one  of  dependence,  and  there  is, 
however  dimly  apprehended,  the  recognition  of  some  rela- 
tionships, and  obligations  are  acknowledged  and  sacrifices 
are  made  for  society.  The  postulate  of  the  proposition  is 
a  historical  fiction. 

There  is  moreover  no  illustration  of  the  origin  of  a 
nation  in  the  voluntary  agreement  of  individuals  who  enter 
it  from  a  condition  of  previous  isolation.  There  is  the  con- 
stant record  of  contracts  or  alliances,  where  two  or  more 
communities  or  nations  are  the  parties,  but  these  exist 
already  as  civil  or  political  powers,  and  enter  into  obliga- 
tions for  a  certain  object ;  but  there  is  no  record  of  a  nation 
itself  established  by  the  voluntary  pact  of  separate  indi- 
viduals. The  conception  of  a  contract,  or  of  a  contractual 
origin  of  law,  itself  appears  only  at  a  later  stage  of  civil 
society,  and  in  its  more  definite  form,  is  the  attainment  of 
a  long  and  elaborate  legal  culture. 

The  nation  being  the  natural  and  normal  condition  of 
existence,  the  individual,  instead  of  entering  it  with  the 
stipulations  of  a  contract,  is  born  and  educated  in  it.  His 
spirit  and  purpose  are  shaped  in  it,  and  its  influence  in 
his  determination  may  be  traced  before  he  is  capable  of 
the  voluntary  choice  or  agreement  which  is  the  condition 
of  a  contract. 

The  theory  fails  to  substantiate  its  assumptions,  which 
are  necessary  to  it,  and  leaves  them  involved  in  inextri- 
cable contradiction.  It  assumes  that  the  people  form  a 
contract,  but  they  are  not  yet  a  people,  nor  even  an  asso- 
ciation of  men  ;  it  is  to  ascertain  the  ground  for  obedience 
to  law,  and  yet  the  contract  it  assumes  is  the  most  definite 


THE   ORIGIN   OF   THE  NATION.  47 

of  laws ;  its  object  is  to  establish  the  foundations  of  the 
state,  and  yet,  in  its  conclusion,  it  falls  short  of  the  con- 
ception of  the  state.  The  individuals  enter  the  associa- 
tion, as  contracting  parties,  but  the  resultant,  by  the  condi- 
tions of  a  contract,  is  private  property.  That,  for  instance, 
which  one  obtains  by  exchange,  or  holds  subject  to  contract, 
he  owns  ;  it  is  his  property,  and  as  he  acquired  it,  he  also 
may  alienate  it  for  a  certain  equivalent,  but  the  state  can- 
not be  found  in  this  conception.  The  theory  fails  alike  as  it 
carries  into  the  state  the  notion  of  a  private  contract,  and 
as  it  derives  the  state  from  a  private  contract.  The  asso- 
ciation of  individuals,  however  numerous,  is  not  the  state ; 
and  the  stipulations  of  the  contract,  however  wide,  have 
not  the  majesty  of  law ;  the  concession  of  private  rights, 
however  extended,  is  not  the  institution  of  public  rights. 
The  parties  to  the  contract,  at  the  most,  are  private  persons, 
and  it  is  not  possible  to  arrive  therein  at  the  conception  of 
public  rights  and  public  duties. 

The  necessary  being  and  end  of  the  nation,  moreover, 
cannot  be  brought  within  the  scope  of  a  contract.  A  con- 
tract proceeds  from  and  through  a  voluntary  act,  and  there- 
fore is  in  the  alternative  of  the  parties,  —  something  which 
may  or  may  not  be.  But  the  process  of  justice,  and  the 
institution  of  rights,  and  the  conformance  to  a  moral  order 
in  which  the  state  is  constituted,  cannot  be  thus  optional ; 
they  must  be,  and  therefore  the  state  is  existent  as  a  power, 
and  is  invested  with  authority.  The  contract  furthermore 
cannot  comprehend  the  spirit,  the  allegiance,  the  obedi- 
ence to  law,  the  apprehension  of  and  the  devotion  to  pub- 
lic ends,  which  are  integral  in  the  state.  There  is  not  in 
it  even  the  moral  spirit  in  which  the  civil  ends  can  be 
construed.  Beccaria  denied  the  right  of  capital  punish- 
ment, on  the  ground  that,  as  society  is  formed  in  a  contract 
between  the  state  and  its  members,  the  consent  of  the 
party  to  his  possible  extinctioji  becomes  then  one  of  the 
terms  of  the  contract,  and  it  is  not  to  be  presumed  that  it 


48  THE  NATION. 

would  be  accorded.  The  position  is  good,  says  Hegel, 
in  the  conception  of  a  state  founded  on  a  contract,  for  the 
conception  has  no  place  for  punishment  in  the  divine  or 
in  the  moral  sense. 

The  contract  cannot  become  the  ground  of  the  unity  or 
the  continuity  of  the  nation;  —  not  of  the  unity,  for  it  is 
the  agreement  of  parties  in  the  exchange  of  equivalents, 
and  each  remains  a  possessor,  or  as  the  phrase  is,  "  it 
takes  two  to  make  a  bargain,"  and  in  the  result  the  parties 
remain  the  several  proprietors;  —  not  of  the  continuity, 
for  a  contract  presumes  the  positive  consent  of  the  parties, 
but  the  constructive  consent  of  succeeding,  generations 
evades  this,  while  yet  the  continuance  of  the  formal  con- 
tract is  conditioned  upon  this  contingency. 

But  finally,  the  conception  does  not  make  valid  its  own 
claim,  and  limited  to  its  own  definition,  it  has  no  founda- 
tion ;  the  contract  is  good  for  nothing  as  a  contract.  It 
does  not  substantiate  the  agreement  of  the  parties,  which  is 
the  condition  of  a  contract.  The  contract  which  is  not 
clear  as  to  the  identity  of  the  parties,  and  then  also  as  to 
its  extent  and  character,  is  a  nullity.  It  could  only  bring 
contradiction  into  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life.  It  could  not 
be  recognized  or  enforced  in  any  court  of  law. 

The  principle  is  not  the  foundation,  but  the  dissolution 
of  the  organization  of  society.  The  contract,  if  it  were 
allowed,  would  be  obligatory  only  upon  those  who  deliber- 
ately and  voluntarily  entered  as  parties  into  it,  and  unless 
renewed  it  would  expire  with  them.  It  could  form  only  a 
temporary  obligation  which  could  be  suspended,  and  only  a 
joint  concern  which  could  be  closed  up  to  go  into. the  hands 
of  a  receiver.  Then  any  number  of  individuals  could  sep- 
arate or  withdraw,  and  there  would  be  no  power  inherent 
in  society  to  justify  its  prevention.  There  is  then  in  gov- 
ernment no  authority,  but  only  an  agency  limited  to  the 
securance  of  the  private  interests  of  the  contractors,  and  in 
society  no  permanence  beyond  their  formal  bond,  and  no 
nation  which  lives  on  although  the  individual  dies. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF   THE  NATION.  49 

The  falsehood  in  this  proposition  becomes  apparent  when 
it  is  confronted  by  the  peril  of  the  state.  The  permanence 
of  the  whole,  and  the  supremacy  of  law,  is  conditional  upon 
the  option  of  the  individual.  It  is  subject  to  the  unlimited 
play  of  individual  caprice.  The  state  may  be  rent  asunder 
in  the  willfulness  and  whim  of  one,  and  beyond  this  it  has 
no  defense  in  internal  disorder  or  external  assault.  The 
proposition  is  the  postulate,  not  of  the  unity  and  order,  but 
of  the  dissolution  of  society.  It  has  been  truly  said,  that 
the  social  contract  should  be  called  rather  a  theory  of  an- 
archy than  the  doctrine  of  the  state.1 

The  truth  which  the  proposition  subverts,  as  it  sweeps  to 
its  perilous  close  is,  that  the  nation  proceeds  in  the  divine 
guidance  of  the  people  in  history.  "  And  yet  there  is," 
says  Bluntschli,  "  in  this  conception,  involved  in  the  most 
deceptive  and  perilous  error,  a  certain  truth.  In  opposi- 
tion to  the  notion  which  sees  in  the  state  only  the  neces- 
sary product  of  nature,  it  asserts  the  truth  that  in  its  nor- 
mal process  the  human  will  can  and  must  act  positively 
and  determinately  upon  the  form  of  the  state,  and  in  con- 
trast with  an  empty  empiricism  it  vindicates  the  reason  of 
the  state  and  the  right  in  human  freedom."  2 

1  Bluntschli's  Allgemeinen  Statsrecht,  vol.  i.  p.  260. 

*  Ibid.  263.    See  on  some  of  these  theories,  Ibid.  vol.  i.  pp.  250, 270. 

Hooker  has  a  statement  of  the  social  contract,  and  the  institution  of  govern- 
ment in  it:  u  Men  knew  that  strifes  and  troubles  would  be  endless,  except  they 
gave  their  common  consent,  all  to  be  ordered  by  some  whom  they  should  agree 
upon,"  —  "for  the  manifestation  of  the  right  to  govern,  the  assent  of  them  who 
are  to  be  governed  seemeth  necessary."  —  Hooker's  Works,  vol.  i.  p.  187.  But 
this  proposition  lies  upon  the  page  of  Hooker  in  a  fragmentary  shape,  and  is  the 
contradiction  of  the  profound  conception  of  law  as  organic  and  not  formal,  which 
is  the  fundamental  thought  of  his  great  work,  and  places  him  among  the  great 
politicians  of  his  own  and  of  every  age.  His  work  is  a  treatise  of  laws,  as  rest- 
ing in  the  eternal  and  divine  reason.  — Dr.  Tulloch  has  justly  said,  the  expression 
of  laws  "  valid  in  authority  both  in  their  substance  and  direct  origin,  in  their 
conformity  to  reason  and  the  national  will  and  position.  He  not  only  opposed  a 
special  church  theory  which  then  sought  to  dominate  in  Protestantism,  but  he 
showed  how  every  such  theory  must  break  against  the  great  laws  of  historical 
induction  and  national  liberty.  It  was  the  rights  of  reason  and  of  free  and  or- 
derly national  development  in  the  face  of  all  preconception  of  whatever  kind, 
that  he  really  vindicated."  —  Tulloch's  Puritanism,  p.  29.  There  is  an  impassa- 
4 


50  THE  NATION. 

It  is  said  that  the  nation  has  its  origin  in  a  sovereignty 
inherent  in  the  people ;  the  people  in  its  own  native  might 
is  supreme ;  its  power  is  of  itself,  and  its  responsibility  is 
to  itself;  its  right  has  no  limitation,  and  it  recognizes  no 
authority  over  it  and  allows  none  separate  from  it. 

This  proposition  postulates  the  very  object  to  be  ascer- 
tained. It  presumes  the  existence  of  the  people,  but  obvi- 
ously it  is  not  of  tke  sovereignty  of  the  people  to  will  its 
own  existence.  In  its  failure  to  define  the  political  people, 
whose  political  action  it  avers,  it  is  destitute  of  a  founda- 
tion, and  there  is  nothing,  in  the  phrase  of  Locke,  "  to 
bottom  it  on." 

The  description  of  the  people,  which  is  commonly  as- 
sumed in  this  theory,  presents  the  immediate  contradiction 
to  the  political  people.  It  represents  the  people  as  a  col- 
lection of  individuals  in  a  certain  locality,  but  there  is 
nothing  in  this  to  distinguish  it  from  the  mob.  It  is  des- 
titute of  the  consciousness  of  the  unity,  and  of  the  order  in 
which  the  political  people  is  formed. 

It  is  also  devoid  of  the  elements  of  political  sovereignty, 
since  there  is  wanting  the  will  of  the  organic  people  whose 
affirmation  is  law,  and  whose  freedom  consists  in  an  or- 
ganism determined  in  law.  In  its  conception  any  collec- 
tion of  men  possessing  a  certain  collective  force,  may  assert 
their  intention,  and  their  action  is  to  be  regarded  as  law, 
and  is  obligatory  upon  all,  and  may  rightly  be  imposed  on 
the  whole.  Then  also  any  collection  of  men  may  sever 
themselves  from  the  existent  political  organization,  and 
interrupt  its  relations,  and  rend  its  whole  order  in  the 
demonstration  of  their  power. 

The  proposition  allows  no  conception  of  a  country,  since 
in  describing  power  as  existent  indefinitely  in  any  locality 
it  avoids  the  necessary  relation  in  its  physical  condition  of 
the  people  to  the  land. 

We  way  from  the  position  of  Hooker  to  the  inferences  of  Laud,  or  to  the  corre- 
sponding inferences,  in  another  form,  of  the  ecclesiasts  of  a  recent  puritanism 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE  NATION.  51 

The  state  moreover  is  not  derived  from  the  sovereignty 
of  a  mere  collection  of  men,  since  its  origin  is  not  in  a  re- 
flective act.  It  is  not  the  result  simply  of  choice  and  de- 
sign. It  would  be  consistent  with  this  to  refer  the  exist- 
ence of  justice  on  the  earth  to  the  formal  deliberation  and 
conclusion  of  men.  And  historically,  man  does  not  exist 
apart  from  the  organization  of  society,  that  is,  the  nation, 
and  from  that  antecedent  condition  determine  its  being. 
The  will  of  man  is  certainly  a  necessary  element  in  it,  but 
as  jt  has  not  its  inception  in  thought,  it  has  not  its  origin 
in  the  individual  nor  in  the  collective  will. 

This  proposition  merges  the  nation  into  the  conception 
of  a  bare  sovereignty.  It  is  the  institution  of  a  power 
which  allows  no  limitation,  and  acknowledges  no  responsi- 
bility beyond  itself.  Its  sole  mandate  is  law,  and  in  this 
alone  the  whole  political  order  subsists.  The  merest  ca- 
price of  the  multitude  is  the  only  authority.  In  another 
form  it  is  the  foundation  of  society  upon  mere  might. 
There  is  in  it  no  recognition  of  the  state  as  the  institu- 
tion of  justice.  It  cannot  comprehend  the  rights  of  the 
individual.  As  in  the  contractual  theory,  the  assumption 
of  the  absolute  sovereignty  of  the  individual,  by  whose 
private  act  society  was  determined,  could  not  arrive  at  the 
conception  of  public  rights  and  public  duties,  so  also  the 
absolute  sovereignty  of  the  mass  cannot  consist  with  pri- 
vate rights,  or  the  freedom  of  the  individual.  It  is  the 
assertion  of  unlimited  power,  the  grasp  from  which  it  has 
been  the  effort  of  civilization  to  wrest  the  supremacy,  and 
to  substitute  in  its  stead  a  moral  force.  It  is  not  the  tyr- 
anny of  the  one,  but  the  tyranny  of  the  multitude  ;  and 
yet  the  latter  passes  indifferently  into  the  former,  and  in 
the  degradation  of  the  individual  through  the  subversion 
of  individual  freedom  the  way  is  open  to  imperialism ;  the 
domination  over  men  in  one  form  succeeds  to  another. 

The  sequence  to  the  assumption  of  political  power  which 
this  proposition  involves,  has  been  always  the  same  in 


52  THE   NATION. 

(  every  form.  The  inevitable  result  of  political  atheism  has 
'been  a  political  absolutism.  But  the  consciousness  of  the 
divine  principle  in  political  power  cannot  be  wholly  effaced, 
and  there  follows  the  apotheosis  of  the  dominant  authority. 
The  Roman  emperors  are  worshipped  as  divine.  In  the 
rejection  of  the  moral  obligation  in  political  power,  with 
the  overthrow  of  all  freedom,  and  the  degradation  of  the 
individual,  there  invariably  will  come  the  apotheosis  of  the 
emperor  or  the  apotheosis  of  the  people.  The  sovereignty, 
as  the  freedom  of  man,  neither  in  the  individual  nor  in 
the  people  is  absolute.  It  can  consist  only  with  the  recog- 
nition of  a  divine  relation  and  the  consequent  obligation 
to  a  divine  law.  The  freedom  of  the  people  has  its  postu- 
late only  in  the  organic  and  moral  being  of  the  people, 
and  this  is  the  precedent  of  sovereignty.  As  the  sequence 
to  political  atheism  has  been  political  absolutism,  so  also  it 
is  only  as  it  has  a  divine  origin,  and  is  formed  in  a  divine 
relation,  that  freedom  exists.  This  has  had  the  clearest 
expression  in  the  crises  of  humanity.  The  voice  of  free- 
dom, the  mighty  voice  of  nations,  has  not  been  "  The  ruler 
is  absolute,"  "  The  people  is  absolute,"  but  it  has  been 
"  God  and  the  people,"  and  it  has  confessed  its  deliverer 
in  Him.  It  has  not  been  the  shout  in  the  host,  but  in 
the  name  of  the  Lord  of  hosts. 

The  truth  which  this  proposition  controverts  is,  that  the 
origin  of  the  nation  is  not  in  the  will  of  the  individual,  nor 
in  the  will  of  the  whole,  but  in  the  higher  will  without 
which  the  whole  can  have  no  being,  and  its  continuity  is 
not  in  the  changing  interest  of  men,  but  in  the  vocation 
which  in  a  widening  purpose  from  the  fathers  to  the  chil- 
dren joins  the  generations  of  men,  and  its  unity  is  not  in 
the  concurrent  choice  of  a  certain  number  of  men,  but  in 
the  divine  purpose  in  history  which  brings  to  one  end  the 
unnumbered  deeds  of  unnumbered  men. 

And  yet  the  truth  which  underlies  this  proposition  also 
comes  into  clearer  light  in  the  higher  development  of  the 


THE   ORIGIN   OF   THE  NATION.  53 

nation.  The  sovereignty  of  the  nation  is  from  God,  and 
of  the  people.  The  representative  of  its  sovereignty  is 
therefore  responsible  to  God  and  accountable  to  the  peo- 
ple. The  power  is  transmitted  through  no  intermediate 
hands,  the  people  is  invested  with  it,  in  all  its  majesty, 
in  the  nation  founded  in  the  law  of  a  moral  person  and 
derivative  from  God  alone.1 

i  The  people  holding  their  authority  from  God,  hold  it  not  as  an  inherent 
right  but  as  a  trust  from  Him,  and  are  accountable  to  Him  for  it.  It  is  not  their 
own.  —  Brownson,  The  American  Republic,  p.  127. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  NATION. 

THE  nation  has  a  divine  foundation,  and  has  for  its  end 
the  fulfillment  of  the  divine  end  in  history.  It  has  its  is- 
sue in  the  divine  prevision,  that  is,  in  the  moral  nature  of 
man.  It  is  not  the  continuance  of  the  family,  nor  the 
product  of  force,  nor  the  working  of  instinct,  nor  the  re- 
sult of  the  social  compact,  nor  the  creation  of  the  sove- 
reignty of  the  people  ;  while  the  truths  which  underlie 
these  otherwise  false  assumptions,  in  the  course  of  prov- 
idence, illustrate  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  the  rise  and 
growth  and  conservation  of  the  nation.1 

The  origin  and  foundation  of  the  nation  has,  in  certain 
aspects,  its  illustration  in  its  analogy  with  the  family.  The 
family  is  a  divine  institution,  and  so  also  is  the  nation  ;  the 
family  is  the  natural  condition,  and  so  also  is  the  nation, 
and  as  natural  it  is  not  of  human  construction  although  a 
human  development,  its  constituent  elements  are  implanted 
in  the  nature  of  man,  and  as  that  nature  is  unfolded  in  the 
realization  of  the  divine  idea,  there  is  the  development 
of  the  state.  The  family  also  is  rude  and  imperfect  in 
its  form  in  the  early  period  of  the  race,  and  it  slowly  de- 
velops into  the  true  and  the  normal,  that  is,  the  mono- 
gamic  form ;  thus  also  the  nation  slowly  develops  into  the 
more  perfect  type. 

1  I  assume  in  this  argument,  from  the  outset,  the  being  of  God  and  His  con- 
nection with  the  world,  and  the  origin  and  derivation  of  the  personality  of  man 
from  Him,  that  "  in  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,"  —  subjects 
which  belong  immediately  to  another  province  of  thought ;  the  statement  how- 
ever may  be  scarcely  necessary,  since  the  work  would  not  perhaps  have  detained 
so  long  any  reader  who  may  deny  these  propositions. 


THE   ORIGIN   OF  THE  NATION.  55 

Tne  nation  exists  as  an  organic  and  moral  being ;  its 
existence  is  a  fact,  and  the  apprehension  of  its  existence 
in  its  beginning,  is  in  the  conscious  life  of  man.  There  is 
therefore,  outside  of  this  consciousness,  evidence  which  is 
only  indicative  of  its  origin,  as  of  the  origin  of  the  individ- 
ual and  of  the  moral  life  of  the  individual.1 

The  evidence  of  the  origin  of  the  nation  is  in  its  neces- 
sary nature.  —  The  nation  is  an  organic  unity ;  it  is  not 
an  artificial  fabric  nor  an  abstract  system,  but  it  has  a  life 
which  is  definite  and  disparate,  and  has  a  development ; 
therefore  it  has  not  its  origin  in  the  individual  nor  the 
collective  will  of  man,  but  must  proceed  from  a  power 
which  can  determine  the  origin  of  organic  being.  —  The 
nation  is  an  organic  whole ;  but  the  whole,  in  which  there 
is  the  conception  of  the  parts,  cannot  be  determined  by  the 
parts,  since  there  must  be  the  predetermination  of  the 
whole  to  which  the  parts  belong  ;  but  the  whole  cannot  de- 
termine itself,  and  must  therefore  proceed  from  a  power 
beyond  itself. 

The  evidence  of  the  origin  of  the  nation  is  also  in  its 
being  as  a  moral  person.  There  is  and  can  be  for  person- 
ality, as  it  transcends  physical  nature,  only  a  divine  origin, 
and  its  realization  is  in  a  divine  relation.  The  subsistence 
of  the  human  personality  is  in  the  divine  personality,  and 
its  realization  is  in  its  divine  relations,  and  as  with  the 
individual  personality,  so  also  with  the  moral  personality 
of  the  nation,  —  its  origin  and  its  consistence  can  be  only 
in  God. 

The  origin  of  the  nation  has  its  illustration  in  the  various 
aspects  in  which  the  nation  in  its  necessary  conception  may 

1  Plutarch  says,  in  a  citation  by  Haller,  "In  my  judgment,  a  city  could  be 
more  easily  built  without  ground,  than  a  state  could  be  founded  or  exist  without 
faith  in  God." 

Cicero  says,  with  a  singular  and  reverent  beauty  of  language,  "  Nihil  est  illi 
orincipi  Deo,  qui  omnem  mundum  regit,  quod  quidem  in  terris  fiat,  acceptius 
quam,  concilia  coetusque  hominum  jure^sociati  qua? civitates  appellantur."  Somn. 
Scipionis,  ch.  iii. 


56  THE  NATION. 

be  regarded.  Thus  the  personality  of  the  nation  is  in- 
dicative of  its  divine  origin.  The  necessary  elements  of 
personality  are  freedom  and  justice,  and  wisdom  and  cour- 
age, and  the  like,  but  these  are  not  physical  powers,  and  as 
moral,  they  are  in  their  origin  above  the  sequence  of  phys- 
ical nature.  Thus  the  freedom,  which  is  the  substance  of 
the  nation,  is  not  the  mere  creation  of  law,  and  it  is  no  more 
in  the  power  of  preachers  and  assemblies  than  of  priestly 
and  imperial  hands  to  bestow  it  ;  it  is  of  no  man  or  collec- 
tion of  men  to  confer  it  as  a  boon,  it  is  a  gift  which  is  not  in 
the  power  of  earth.  Thus  also  the  justice  which  is  incor- 
porated in  the  state  is  higher  than  the  enactment  of  the 
law,  and  more  than  the  impulses  of  the  people ;  it  is  pre- 
sumed to  be  the  content  of  the  law,  and  controls  the  im- 
pulses of  the  people.  It  is  not  the  device  of  legislators, 
and  as  it  exists  in  the  nation,  there  is  manifest  its  divine 
origin.  The  illustration  may  be  traced  further  in  all  the 
necessary  moral  elements  of  the  nation,  as  wisdom  and 
courage. 

The  powers  with  which  the  nation  is  invested,  are  also 
indicative  of  its  origin.  It  is  clothed  with  an  authority, 
and  has  a  majesty  which  no  power  of  earth  may  assume. 
The  affirmation  of  its  will  is  law,  but  apart  from  it,  the 
will  of  no  man  and  no  collection  of  men,  is  law  for  another. 
The  right  of  government  is  its  right,  but  apart  from  it  no 
man  and  no  collection  of  men  have  the  right  to  govern 
another,  and  it  belongs  to  the  nation  only  as  it  is  of  di- 
vine right.  There  is  no  human  ground  on  which  it  can 
rest.  They  who  are  intrusted  with  it  hold  it  as  the 
representatives  of  the  nation,  and  as  the  ministers  of  the 
divine  purpose  in  the  nation.  The  President  and  the 
Congress,  as  the  Crown  and  the  Parliament,  rule  by  the 
grace  of  God. 

The  elements  which  are  manifest  in  the  government  of 
the  nation,  in  its  moral  being,  can  have  only  a  divine 
ground.  The  power,  which  is  in  the  people  forming  the 


/ 

THE   ORIGIN   OF   THE  NATION.    v  /    /J    ,       57 
/>  J    fo 

Y  *  A 

nation,  is  over  the  people,  and  while  the  indtyidual  acts*  in/^   j 

the  government  of  the  nation,  it  is  ove/f  the  indiVifti^l.and 
he  is  subject  to  it,  and  this  is  a  power  whlc^vy  and  can4i 
in  the  nation  only  as  it  is  a  moral  person,  ana  fe  Deriva- 
tive from  God.  This  alone  in  government,  is  the  condi- 
tion also  of  the  reconciliation  of  law  and  freedom.1  The 
character  of  the  authority  of  the  nation  also  indicates  its 
origin.  It  has  authority,  and  is  invested  with  power  in 
the  maintenance  of  a  moral  order  on  the  earth.  But  the 
right  thus  to  maintain  authority  over  men,  belongs  in 
itself  to  no  man  and  no  collection  of  men,  and  is  existent 
in  the  nation  only  as  it  has  a  divine  genesis. 

There  is  evidence,  also,  of  the  divine  origin  of  the  nation, 
in  the  historical  facts  which  bring  out  the  consciousness  of 
the  people.  Its  expression  may  be  traced  in  the  greater 
historical  nations,  and  in  their  greater  ages,  the  crowning 
centuries  of  their  civilization.  It  appears  in  the  symbols 
of  all  their  power,  and  is  reflected  in  their  laws  and  litera- 
ture and  art.  In  Judaea  it  was  the  central  principle  of 
national  existence,  and  was  held  through  all  the  changes 
of  its  institutions  as  a  law  of  life,  which  through  the  vi- 
cissitudes of  its  course  exaltation  could  not  bring  into  for- 
getfulness,  nor  humiliation  into  denial.  In  Greece  it  was 
shaped  in  the  beginning  of  its  history  in  all  its  traditions, 
and  is  the  last  word  of  its  philosophy ;  it  was  joined  with 
the  sacredness  of  the  family ;  it  united  in  one  aim  its  he* 
roes  and  its  poets ;  it  was  wrought  in  its  architecture,  and 
in  the  faultless  lines  of  the  sculpture  of  its  temples  ;  it  gave 
the  type  of  victory  to  its  art.  In  Rome  the  very  religion 
was  the  witness  to  the  sacredness  of  the  family  and  the 
state,  and  the  divine  obligations  in  the  relations  of  a  father 
and  a  citizen.  This  moulded  all  her  institutions.  The 
recognition  in  these  nations  of  a  divine  origin  was  also 

1 "  Government  like  man  himself  participates  of  the  divine  being,  and  de- 
rived from  God  through  the  people,  it  at  the  same  time  participates  of  human 
reason  and  will,  thus  reconciling  authority  with  freedom,  stability  with  prog- 
ress." —  Brownson.  The  American  Republic,  p.  126. 


58  THE  NATION. 

clearest  in  the  ages  of  their  strength.  It  was  not  in  pe- 
riods characterized  by  superstition,  by  prostration  and  ab- 
ject fear,  when  the  powers  of  man  were  dwarfed  by  the 
impending  vastness  of  nature,  before  he  had  discovered 
the  harmony  in  the  wide  sweep  of  her  courses,  and  the 
uniformity  in  her  cycles,  and  'the  imagination  was  bewil- 
dered by  an  apparent  discord,  but  it  was  in  the  manhood 
of  the  people,  when  there  was  the  highest  self-respect  and 
self-assertion,  in  periods  whose  colossal  monuments  attest 
the  triumph  over  physical  nature,  whose  noble  monuments 
attest  the  higher  triumph  over  foes  in  the  spiritual  nature. 
It  was  not  in  what  are  called  the  pre-historic  ages  ;  in 
these  nations  there  is  the  constructive  course  of  history. 
It  was  held  in  no  individual  conception,  but  the  very 
names  Roma  and  Athene  were  the  names  of  divinities  as 
well  as  nations.  There  was  for  each  in  its  name  a  twofold 
significance,  and  it  denoted  not  only  a  political  organiza- 
tion, but  was  the  sign  of  a  divinity  in  whom  it  was  con- 
ceived that  the  people  stood. 

This  spirit  in  the  most  varying  forms  may  be  traced  in 
every  historical  nation.  In  the  unity  and  continuity  of 
the  nation,  there  has  been  the  consciousness  of  the  divine 
guidance  in  history.  It  has  united  the  generations,  and 
the  nation  in  its  battles  has  drawn  its  inspiration  from  no 
lower  faith.  The  great  events  in  its  history  become  the 
witness  to  the  divine  presence,  and  in  the  crisis  through 
which  it  passes  there  is  manifest  a  divine  judgment,  con- 
suming the  evil  which  was  destroying  it,  and  gaining  for  it 
a  divine  deliverance  from  the  evil.  Therefore  in  Judaea  all 
the  great  testimonies  in  its  national  history,  through  the 
procession  of  its  centuries,  were  repeated,  of  Him  that  en- 
dureth  forever. 

The  conscience  of  man  also  gives  the  evidence  of  the 
origin  of  the  nation.  The  moral  spirit  of  the  people  recog- 
nizes the  life  of  the  nation  as  sacred.  It  is  apprehended 
as  a  life  which  cannot  be  trifled  with,  nor  weighed  lightly, 


THE   ORIGIN   OF  THE  NATION.  59 

nor  judged  indifferently.  Its  inviolability  is  affirmed,  and 
the  obligation  of  its  members  to  it.  And  as  there  is  in  the 
conscience  the  witness  to  a  divine  relationship,  if  the  na- 
tion had  merely  an  external  or  a  physical  being,  there 
would  be  no  ground  in  which  the  conscience  could  ac- 
knowledge a  relation  and  obligation  to  it ;  there  would  be 
only  the  individual  obligation  which  one  may  hold  to  an- 
other. The  conscience  testifies  also  to  a  judgment  as 
coining  upon  the  nation,  because  formed  in  a  relation  in- 
volving an  immediate  and  a  divine  obligation.1  There  is 
no  thought  which  has  had  a  more  intense  expression  as 
reflected  in  literature  and  art.  In  Rome  and  Greece  as 
they  recognized  in  the  disaster  of  the  individual  a  moral 
judgment,  it  was  still  more  apparent  that  the  wider  disaster 
that  came  upon  the  nation  could  not  be  divested  of  a  moral 
condition. 

If  the  divine  origin  and  foundation  of  the  nation  is  de- 
nied, the  authority  of  its  government  is  resolved  into  mere 
force.  The  power  in  the  nation,  as  self-subsistent,  is  neces- 
sarily absolute.  It  may  take  the  form  of  the  absolutism  of 
the  individual  or  of  the  people,  but  its  principle  and  result 
are  the  same.  In  a  popular  absolutism  there  may  be  a 
more  utter  degradation  of  humanity  and  destruction  of 
personality,  until  all  that  gives  a  moral  elevation  to  the  life 
of  men  and  of  nations  shall  expire,  and  there  remains  only 
a  level  sweep  as  in  bleak  and  desolated  fields.  There  is,  it 
is  said,  in  the  reign  of  the  despot,  still  one  that  is  free,  but 
here  there  is  freedom  neither  for  the  ruler  nor  for  the  peo- 
ple. The  ruler  who  recognizes  and  follows  only  the  popular 
voice  and  the  popular  opinion,  becomes  himself  a  slave. 
And  he  only  is  truly  a  ruler  and  truly  free,  who  recognizes 

1  Mr.  Brownson  says  of  a  recent  political  school,  "  it  has  rejected  the  divine 
origin  and  ground  of  government,  and  excluded  God  from  the  state.  They  have 
not  only  separated  the  state  from  the  church  as  an  external  corporation,  but  from 
God  as  its  internal  Lawgiver,  and  hy  so  doing  have  deprived  the  state  of  her  sa- 
credness,  inviolability,  and  hold  upon  the  conscience."  —  The  American  Republic 
p.  122. 


60  THE  NATION. 

in  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  the  divine  source  of  its 
unity  and  power,  and  whose  action  in  it  is  therefore  in  im- 
mediate responsibility  to  God.  If  there  is  for  the  nation 
no  divine  origin  and  ground,  and  the  ruler  is  to  listen 
only  to  the  voice  of  a  people  in  itself  supreme,  and  sepa- 
rate from  God,  then  in  that  awful  absolutism  his  strength 
is  broken,  and  his  power  is  resolved  in  those  living  atoms. 
The  ruler  is  silent  in  the  popular  clamor,  as  he  is  swayed 
by  the  agitation  of  the  crowd,  and  is  blind  as  he  is  hurried 
by  the  popular  impulse  and  passion.  But  the  nation,  when 
it  is  conceived  as  separate  from  God,  can  have  no  realiza- 
tion, for  in  that  separation  the  ground  of  all  unity  and  con- 
tinuity is  lost,  and  there  is  no  more  a  people.1 

1  Bluntschli  cites  the  language  of  President  Washington  —  the  first  inaugu- 
ral of  the  first  President  —  as  among  the  strongest  assertions  of  this  principle  in 
modern  political  literature.  —  Allgemeinen  Statsrecht,  vol.  i.  p.  253. 

While  it  is  denied  by  popular  schools,  and  avoided  by  ecclesiasts  and  pro- 
nounced enigmatic  by  newspapers,  there  has  been  no  age  in  which  it  has  been 
more  clearly  recognized  in  the  thought  of  statesmen.  Napoleon  III.  said  at 
Rouen,  June,  1868,  "  We  cannot  separate  our  love  of  country  from  our  love  of 
God." 

"  The  human  authority  in  the  state  can  never  again  be  confounded  with  the 
divine  authority  (the  theocracy),  but  it  must  necessarily  be  founded  on  the  divine 
authority."  —  Stahl's  Philosophic  des  Rechis,  vol.  ii.  sec.  ii.  p.  184. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  PEOPLE  AND  THE  LAND. 

THE  people  and  the  land  form  the  natural  elements  of 
the  nation,  in  its  physical  unity  and  circumstance ;  they 
exist  in  a  necessary  inter-relation. 

The  people  in  its  organic  unity,  constitutes  the  nation. 
It  is  not  a  sum  or  an  aggregate  of  men,  a  chance  collec- 
tion accumulated  as  an  heap  of  fragmentary  atoms;  it  is 
not  a  mob,  but  a  people  ;  not  a  vulgus  but  a  populus.  It 
is  not  a  party  nor  a  sect,  nor  a  mere  association  of  parties 
and  sects,  nor  a  combination  of  separate  corporate  interests, 
nor  of  individuals  in  the  partnership  of  their  private  inter- 
ests, and  there  is  in  none  of  these  the  consciousness  of  the 
unity  and  of  the  order  which  belong  to  a  nation.  With 
the  mob,  a  detached  and  unformed  mass  of  isolated  indi- 
viduals, it  has  nothing  to  do,  and  they  can  have  nothing  to 
do  with  it.1 

The  people  is  not  determinate  in  any  enumeration  of 
individuals.  It  is  the  people,  not  the  population,  which 
forms  the  nation.  It  is  not  ascertained  in  any  arithmetical 
notation,  and  the  political  order  has  not  this  nominal  basis. 
It  is  a  mechanical  conception  which  assumes  a  certain  nor- 
mal number  as  its  true  condition.  Rousseau  estimated  the 
normal  number  for  the  people  at  ten  thousand,  and  at  peri- 

1  French  and  German  publicists, —  the  former  constantly  and  the  latter  mainly, 
—  use  these  terms,  the  people  and  the  nation,  in  this  significance.  The  organic 
people  in  its  physical  condition,  as  the  natural  element  of  the  state  is  called  the 
people  (Peuple,  naturvolk),  in  its  political  condition  it  is  called  the  nation  (Na- 
tion, statsvolk).  But  the  terms  in  German  political  literature  are  wide  away 
from  any  other.  Bluntschli  adopted  the  above  distinction  in  his  earlier  writings, 
while  in  his  later,  against  the  common  use,  he  has  followed  the  strict  derivation 
of  the  words. 


62  THE  NATION. 

odic  intervals  it  was  to  be  changed  to  conform  to  this  cen- 
sus, but  it  has  no  more  an  arbitrary  ground  in  the  num- 
bers of  statistics  than  in  the  formulas  of  lawyers.  It  may 
change  with  successive  generations,  and  in  the  prosperity 
and  the  adversity  of  its  years.  It  may  exist  in  "  numbers 
as  the  stars  for  multitude,"  or  in  only  a  remnant  who  keep 
its  calling  and  guard  its  ancient  faith,  and  endure  through 
captivities,  and  at  last  triumph  over  every  conquest.  The 
national  type  is  not  obliterated  in  the  vicissitudes  of  events, 
nor  overborne  by  the  migrations  of  races,  and  does  not 
perish,  although  the  individual  die. 

The  people  in  its  wholeness  constitutes  the  nation,  and 
it  is  to  comprehend  in  its  political  aim  the  purpose,  and  in 
its  end  to  realize  the  destination  of  the  people  as  an  whole. 
It  is  not  of  the  one,  nor  of  the  many,  but  of  the  people. 
There  is  no  individual,  as  Louis  XIV.,  who  can  assume  to 
be  the  state,  and  no  hereditary  class,  and  no  party  or  sec- 
tion can  say,  it  is  in  us  alone.  There  is  no  sect  and  no 
faction  that  can  claim  it  as  an  exclusive  possession.  The 
spirit  of  a  party,  or  a  class  or  a  sect  in  its  isolation,  subor- 
dinates the  state  to  a  special  or  a  private  end.  Thus  when 
he  who  comprehends  only  a  party  or  a  class  or  a  sect,  —  a 
mere  fragment,  comes  to  work  upon  the  whole,  not  com- 
prehending in  his  purpose  the  people  as  an  whole,  but  only 
the  parts  and  nothing  beyond,  his  work  is  that  of  inevitable 
weakness  and  corruption. 

The  people  in  its  normal  and  moral  relations  constitutes 
the  nation.  There  is  no  arbitrary  principle  in  which  the 
people  can  define  its  existence,  as  if  society  had  an  indi- 
vidual or  artificial  basis.  And  it  is  not  simply  the  physical 
condition  which  conforms  to  a  tribal  law.  It  cannot  make 
a  physical  condition  the  principle  of  its  being.1  There  is 

i  "  America,  though  the  best  representative  of  the  social  and  political  gains  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  was  not  the  parent  of  the  idea,  in  modern  civilization, 
that  man  is  a  constituent  member  of  the  state  of  his  birth  irrespective  of  his 
ancestry.  It  was  become  the  public  law  of  Christendom.  Had  America  done 
less,  she  would  have  been  not  the  leader  but  the  laggard  of  nations."  —  Ban- 


THE  PEOPLE  AND  THE  LAND.  63 

not  among  its  powers  any  by  which  it  may  elect  those  who 
shall  be  in  it,  but  as  the  normal  and  moral  condition  men 
are  born  and  live  and  act  in  it.  It  is  not  to  restrict  itself 
to  those  who  may  be  rich  or  learned.  There  is  no  human 
imperfectness  that  can  be  made  the  ground  of  exclusion 
from  it,  and  no  human  greatness  that  can  justify  an  exalta- 
tion over  it.  The  isolation  from  it  can  result  only  through 
crime,  and  this  is  in  the  law  that  crime  is  in  its  nature  the 
severance  of  the  relations  of  a  moral  order. 

The  people  in  its  conscious  unity,  embodies  its  aim  in 
the  nation.  Then  it  apprehends  its  object  in  it,  and  it  is 
set  before  it  in  its  moral  order  as  the  aim  of  all.  It  is  then 
reflected  in  the  political  spirit  of  the  people,  and  moulds  its 
character.  There  is  in  a  mere  mass  or  aggregate,  a  frag- 
mentary collection  of  individuals  or  parties,  no  ground  in 
which  the  unity,  apparent  in  political  spirit  and  political 
character,  can  subsist. 

The  people  is  to  work  out  its  own  political  conception 
in  the  nation,  after  the  type  of  its  own  individuality.  The 
external  circumstance,  the  limitations  and  conditions  in 
which  it  is  to  act,  are  as  varied  as  in  the  development  of 
the  individual  type  in  nature,  while  its  life  which  runs 
through  human  cycles,  has  a  wider  range  than  in  the 
sequence  of  physical  nature.  The  forms  through  which 
its  spirit  is  to  work,  are  more  manifold  than  those  written 
in  nature's  book  of  infinite  secrecy.  The  life  of  history  is 
the  more  opulent  in  its  types  ;  and  the  forms  of  the  bud 
and  the  tree  in  limitless  forests,  are  not  so  individual  or  so 
diverse  as  those  wrought  in  the  spirit  of  the  people  in 
history.  It  is  to  work  out  its  own  purpose  in  a  moral 
world,  and  in  it  alone  it  has  the  satisfaction  of  the  spirit. 
It  can  no  more  conceive  the  desire  to  be  another  people, 
than  the  individual  can  conceive  the  desire  to  be  another 

croft's  History,  vol  ix.  p.  449.  "  Der  zustand  der  Barberei  besteht  darin  dass 
eine  menge  ein  Volk  ist  ohne  zugleiqja  ein  Staat  zu  sein."  —  Hegel,  in  Rose- 
Icranz  Leben,  p.  244. 


64  THE  NATION. 

than  himself,  —  that  is,  to  lose  his  own  identity.  The  spirit 
of  the  people  is  thus  reflected  in,  as  it  is  formed  in  and 
through,  the  individual  and  the  generation,  while  its  perfect 
type  is  in  no  single  individual  and  no  separate  generation, 
but  in  the  work  of  the  people  in  its  continuity. 

The  people  alone  in  the  nation,  constitutes  in  its  inte- 
gral and  moral  life  the  political  order.  It  belongs  to  none 
separate  from  it  to  prescribe  its  political  course.  The  peo- 
ple can  acknowledge  no  control  beyond  its  own  organic  law 
save  only  that  of  God,  and  the  law  of  its  being  as  a  moral 
person  presumes  that,  as  its  freedom  subsists  in  that.  The 
power  belongs  of  itself  to  no  individual  and  no  family  and 
no  class,  separate  from  the  nation,  as  there  is  also  no  indi- 
vidual and  no  family  and  no  class  belonging  to  the  nation 
that  is  exempt  from  its  authority.1 

The  people,  in  the  nation  in  its  moral  being,  alone  has 
the  right  of  government.  It  is  in  the  nation  only,  of  di- 
vine right.  Its  power  is  from  God  and  of  the  people. 
Its  authority  is  therefore  in  the  name  of  God  and  the  peo- 
ple, and  the  responsibility  of  those  who  bear  its  authority 
is  to  God  and  the  people.  The  government  therefore  can 
claim  identity  with  no  special  and  divine  majesty,  and  can 
assume  no  special  and  divine  appointment.  It  is  only  as 
representative  of  the  nation  that  it  is  clothed  with  author- 
ity. 

The  right  of  government  is  in  the  will  of  the  people, 
while  it  is  only  in  its  being  in  the  nation,  as  a  moral  per- 
son, that  the  will  of  the  people  subsists.  Its  authority 
apart  from  this,  has  no  foundation,  and  can  refer  for  its 
postulate  only  to  a  fiction  ;  it  can  be  held  then  only  in  an 
arbitrary  assumption,  and  defined  only  in  an  abstract  and 
vacant  conception.  The  being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral 

1  "  This  authority  is  not '  the  governed,'  from  whose  '  consent '  it  is  so  often 
in  a  false  sense  declared  'every  government  derives  its  just  powers,'  but  a  po- 
litical people,  having  the  power  as  sovereign  to  govern  every  natural  person 
within  a  certain  territory  without  reference  to  his  consent."  — Mr.  Kurd's  article 
on  "  Reconstruction,"  American  Law  Review,  January,  1867. 


THE  PEOPLE  AND  THE  LAND.  65 

person,  is  alone  the  positive  and  substantial  ground,  apart 
from  which  the  will  of  the  people  is  only  formal,  and  its 
freedom  only  the  empty  sphere  of  outward  circumstance. 
The  will  of  the  people  in  the  nation  thus  is  not  compre- 
hended simply  in  its  collective  act,  nor  in  its  momentary 
act,  and  these  may  not  always  embody  the  moral  aim,  nor 
represent  the  continuous  purpose  of  the  people.  It  obtains 
a  clearer  expression  in  the  exclusion  of  the  caprice,  the 
whim  and  willfulness  of  men,  and  in  the  latter  there  is 
confusion  and  not  order,  the  creation  of  chaos  and  not  the 
state.  The  assumption  of  the  caprice  of  men  as  the  con- 
dition of  power  subverts  government,  and  resolves  the 
state  into  its  atomy. 

The  will  of  the  people  in  the  being  of  the  nation  as  a 
moral  person,  is  the  organic  political  power.  It  is  the  only 
unbroken  succession.  The  ruler  who  is  over  and  separate 
from  the  people,  is  he  whose  right  is  disputed,  whose  au- 
thority is  transient,  whose  succession  is  subject  to  accident. 
The  will  of  the  people  in  its  succession  in  the  nation,  is  not 
limited  to  the  individual  or  to  the  generation,  but  it  is 
transmitted  through  the  individual  and  the  generations  of 
men. 

The  people  forming  the  nation  exists  in  its  physical 
unity  and  circumstance,  in  a  necessary  relation  to  the 
land.  The  land  is  the  outward  sphere  of  the  organization 
of  the  political  people.  The  people  and  the  land  thus, 
in  common  language,  become  a  synonym.  Greece  is  a 
name  which  represents  a  certain  definite  geographical  limit, 
and  again  the  complex  political  life  of  a  people. 

The  possession  of  the  land  by  the  people  is  the  condition 
of  its  historical  life.  The  land  is  the  field  of  its  work  in 
history.  Nomads  may  form  a  horde,  but  not  a  state.  The 
historical  work  of  the  people  has  an  immediate  relation  to 
the  land  in  which  its  fortunes  %YQ  unfolded. 

The  right  to  the  land  is  in  the  people,  and  the  land  is 


66  THE  NATION. 

given  to  the  people  in  the  fulfillment  of  a  moral  order  on 
the  earth.  It  is '  the  possession  of  the  political  people. 
Thus  it  can  regard  it  only  as  a  robbery,  when  it  is  de- 
prived of  any  part  of  the  domain  given  to  it  and  associated 
with  it  in  its  history.  The  crime  is  the  same  when  it  is 
undertaken  by  the  treachery  of  a  faction  from  within,  or 
by  marauders  from  without,  but  in  the  complicity  of  evil 
in  the  former,  the  guilt  is  enhanced  and  it  becomes  the 
greater  crime  of  history. 

The  people  has  in  its  development,  the  definite  deter- 
mination of  the  national  domain.  The  description '  of  its 
boundaries  is  to  indicate  its  political  organization  and  to 
conform  to  its  historical  destination. 

The  exact  designation  of  its  boundaries  is  also  neces- 
sary in  its  political  administration,  for  the  maintenance  of 
its  authority  and  the,  enforcement  of  its  laws,  and  the  insti- 
tution of  its  order,  and  without  it  there  would  be  a  source 
of  constant  confusion. 

The  boundaries  of  the  nation  are  laid  in  nature  and  in 
the  historical  course  of  the  people.  This  law  is  universal, 
and  the  nations  which  have  violated  it,  again  have  been 
compelled  to  acknowledge  it.  Italy  has  never  passed  her 
boundaries  so  clearly  defined  in  nature  and  in  history, 
but  she  has  been  driven  back  again  with  loss ;  and  Ger- 
many in  its  aggressions  has  overstepped  these  limits,  only 
after  disaster  to  withdraw  again.  The  law  has  its  illus- 
tration with  every  people.  Its  boundaries  are  not  as  the 
artificial  lines  which  trace  within  the  nation  the  occupation 
and  possession  of  private  property. 

There  is  in  nature  and  in  history  the  evidence,  that 
God  has  appointed  the  boundaries  of  nations.  They  are 
to  be  held  in  the  faith  that  the  land  is  appointed  for  the 
people,  and  the  right  to  it  is  in  its  moral  order  and  its  his- 
torical vocation.  In  this  faith  the  people  will  assert  them 
reverently  and  carefully,  will  guard  them  steadily  and  well. 
The  integral  unity  of  the  land  will  be  maintained  against 


THE  PEOPLE  AND  THE  LAND.  67 

alienation  and  division.  The  bounds  of  the  nation 
which  are  written  in  the  courses  of  the  mountains  and  the 
lines  of  the  oceans,  are  written  also  upon  the  hearts  of  its  . 
children.  In  their  natural  distinction  these  boundaries 
may  be  mountains  or  oceans  and  seas,  and  sometimes  also 
rivers  and  valleys ;  but  rivers  and  valleys,  which  are  the 
wide  highways  of  a  nation,  may  become  bonds  of  union 
rather  than  of  separation,  and  in  the  associations  of  the 
people,  may  aid  to  forge  it  together.  In  the  words  of 
President  Lincoln,  it  was  after  the  victories  of  General 
Grant  and  Admiral  Farragut,  that  the  Mississippi  ran  fc'  un- 
vexed  to  the  sea."  The  boundaries  in  nature  become, 
also,  lines  of  defense,  and  in  the  strength  with  which  they 
are  held,  form  a  guaranty  for  the  peace  of  the  people. 

It  may  be  only  gradually  that  the  people  enter  and  oc- 
cupy the  land  which  is  open  before  it,  and  is  necessary  to 
its  manifest  historical  vocation.  The  boundaries  thus  may 
be  modified  in  its  history,  but  it  can  allow  no  change  to 
weaken  it  in  the  centre  of  its  power,  or  to  impair  the  inte- 
gral unity  of  its  territory,  and  no  change  which  will  en- 
croach upon  the  historical  domain,  or  subvert  the  integral 
unity  of  another  nation.  The  change  which  would  have 
this  result  would  imperil  the  whole,  and  would  necessarily 
fail  of  permanence. 

As  the  land  is  the  possession  of  the  people  it  cannot  be 
held  as  the  patrimony  of  a  prince,  or  the  monopoly  of  a 
class.  The  land  belongs  to  the  people  constituted  as  a  na- 
tion, and  the  right  to  it  is  in  its  moral  order.  The  exclu- 
sive possession  and  entail  of  the  whole  domain  by  a  few 
may  prevent  this  object  and  subvert  the  moral  order,  as  it 
destroys,  for  instance,  the  life  of  the  family.  In  England 
there  are  those  which  are  called  great  families,  but  as  its 
homes  are  swept  away  the  family  life  of  the  people  is 
destroyed.  One  half  of  the  land  is  owned  by  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  proprietors,  and  the  whole  number  of  pro- 
prietors is  reduced  to  thirty  thousand,  while  the  majority  /^ 


68  THE  NATION. 

of  the  people  subsist  on  wages.  "  The  yeomanry,"  says 
Mr.  Disraeli,  "  has  vanished  from  the  face  of  the  land, 
while  the  tendency  of  business  has  been  to  introduce  a 
condition  to  consist  only  of  wealth  and  toil." 

There  is  a  common  conception  in  which  the  land  is  so  re- 
garded, as  to  make  simply  a  geographical  position  the  origin 
and  condition  of  the  existence  of  the  nation.  Mr.  Maine 
attempts  to  establish  the  state  upon  the  fact  of  local  conti- 
guity.1 But  in  an  existence  in  a  local  contiguity  there  is 
not  the  origin  nor  the  foundation  of  the  political  life  of 
men.  While  the  fact  of  residence  and  coexistence  is 
necessary  in  the  historical  course  of  the  nation,  it  does  not 
bear  in  itself  its  germ,  nor  is  it  the  source  of  its  integral 
unity.  It  is  not  the  circumstance  of  neighborhood,  but 
the  consciousness  of  relations  to  one's  neighbor  that  is 
indicative  of  the  origin  of  the  nation.  The  unity  of  the 
nation  is  not  in  the  existence  of  man  in  a  certain  contigu- 
ity, but  in  a  conscious  purpose  and  a  relation  which  is 
necessary  to  the  destination  of  each  and  of  the  whole ;  its 
condition  is  not  a  merely  physical  relation,  but  a  mora. 
relation ;  and  it  has  not  merely  the  existence  of  the  in- 
dividual for  an  end,  but  the  whole  for  an  end.  There  are 
thus,  for  instance,  vast  contiguous  populations  which  have 
existed  for  centuries  on  the  plains  of  Asia  and  Africa,  and 
in  the  most  diverse  geographical  positions,  and  yet  they 
have  not  formed  a  state.  There  are  populations  by  the 
Rhine  strictly  more  contiguous  to  the  French,  in  their 
bulk,  than  to  the  Germans,  but  they  would  go  to  battle 
rather  than  be  wrested  from  the  unity  of  the  German 
nation.  This  definition  of  the  origin  of  the  nation  in  local 
contiguity,  has  also  no  historical  justification.  There  was 
a  people  dwelling  by  the  banks  of  the  Tiber  before  the 
beginning  of  that  national  development  which  was  to  de- 
termine so  widely  the  world's  history,  but  they  were  not 
Rome.  There  is  a  population  in  Judaea,  but  the  stones 

i  Maine's  Ancient  Law,  p.  128. 


THE  PEOPLE  AND  THE  LAND.  69 

of  its  temple  are  broken,  and  it  is  not  there  that  we  seek 
the  continuity  of  Israel. 

The  relation  of  the  people  and  the  land  is  consistent 
only  with  the  existence  of  the  nation  in  its  necessary  con- 
ception. The  proposition  which  represents  the  people  as  a 
mere  collection,  an  aggregate  of  men,  and  the  proposition 
which  defines  the  origin  of  the  nation  in  a  contract,  cannot 
embrace  this  conception  of  a  country,  and  when  the  nation 
is  regarded  as  only  the  creation  of  a  formal  law,  it  no  longer 
comprehends  the  necessary  relation  of  the  people  and  the 
land. 

The  influence,  in  this  interrelation,  which  the  land  has 
upon  the  people  is  apparent,  but  there  is  a  tendency  in  a 
certain  school  to  ascribe  to  the  land  a  determinative  influ- 
ence, and  to  refer  the  constructive  and  formative  power  of 
the  people  to  external  circumstance  and  physical  condition 
—  the  climate,  soil,  geology,  minerals,  fishes,  etc.  This 
had  a  fair  consideration  in  Montesquieu,  but  there  is  a 
school  which  comprehends  nothing  beyond.  The  denial 
of  the  reality  of  human  freedom,  the  assertion  of  a  bare 
necessitarianism,  has  its  consistent  sequence,  in  the  refer- 
ence to  physical  influences  of  a  controlling  power,  in  what 
it  yet  calls  history.  With  the  denial  of  human  freedom  it 
passes  immediately  to  the  study  and  computation  of  cli- 
matic conditions,  the  soil,  the  climate,  the  agricultural  prod- 
ucts, and  the  like.g  The  writings  of  Mr.  Buckle  illustrate 
this.  But  in  the  existence  of  the  nation,  which  is  the  sub- 
stance of  civilization,  there  is  a  power  higher  than  the 
necessary  process  of  the  physical  world.  It  exists  in  the 
order  of  the  moral  world.  This  cannot  be  determined  by 
physical  elements.  The  history  of  the  world  cannot  be 
deduced  from  its  geography.  In  the  political  course  of 
the  nation  the  land  is  a  necessary  element,  but  it  is  not  the 
creative  nor  the  controlling  element.  The  future  of  the 
nation  will  not  be  concluded  by  its  relative  nearness  to  the 
equator.  The  nation  exists  historically  in  the  realization  of 


70  THE  NATION. 

the  freedom  of  man,  and  his  consequent  dominion  over 
nature.  Mr.  Buckle,  when  he  stood  in  Judaea,  avowed  that 
his  only  interest  was  in  the  agriculture  of  the  country  ;  but 
the  soil  is  the  same  upon  which  a  people  lived  who  stood  in 
the  continuity  of  a  nation,  which  long  captivity  in  strange 
lands  and  under  strange  skies  did  not  destroy,  whose  unity 
was  lost  in  the  grandeur  of  no  imperialism,  and  whose  lines 
of  kings  and  prophets  looked  to  the  coming  of  One  in  whom 
was  the  hope  of  humanity  ;  but  the  physical  process  of  na- 
ture does  not  renew  that  life.  The  mountains  of  Attica 
are  the  same  upon  which  the  Parthenon  was  built,  and 
their  quarries  the  same  which  furnished  the  marble  for  the 
sculpture  of  Athene,  and  the  windy  plains  are  the  same 
upon  which  an  army  was  mustered  at  Marathon,  and  the 
sea  is  the  same  whose  waves  were  parted  by  their  ships  at 
Salamis,  but  the  conflict  which  in  its  moral  interest  made 
these  names  immortal,  has  closed.1 

Since  the  land  is  necessary  to  the  historical  development 
of  the  people  in  the  continuity  of  the  nation,  the  nation  has 
supreme  authority  over  it.  It  is  in  its  integral  character 
the  domain  of  the  people.  Within  its  limits,  therefore,  the 
people  can  allow  no  possession  exempt  from  its  control,  and 
no  individual  beyond  its  law. 

The  people  and  the  land  exist,  in  their  interrelation,  in 
the  historical  realization  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  order. 
The  land  becomes  associated  with  the  spirit  and  the  des- 
tination of  the  people.  Since  it  is  the  external  sphere  and 
condition  of  the  life  of  the  people  in  its  moral  order,  it  is 
holy  ;  and  since  it  belongs  to  the  people  in  its  continuity, 
it  is  inalienable.  There  is  thus  attached  to  the  land  a  sa- 
credness  which  is  derivative  from  the  moral  being  of  the 
nation,  and  it  is  held  as  inviolate. 

The  land  in  its  integral  unity  is  thus  a  divine  gift,  a 

1  Comte  has  a  more  exact  statement  of  the  influence  of  the  physical  world 
upon  man:  " The  world,"  he  says,  "furnishes  the  materials,  and  man  deter- 
mines the  form."  .  .  .  .  "  Man  is  not  a  result  of  the  world,  and  yet  he  de- 
pends upon  it."  —  Catechisme  Positivisle,  pp.  37,  42. 


THE  PEOPLE  AND  THE  LAND.  71 

habitation  of  the  people  for  all  generations.  It  shares  in 
the  sacredness  of  the  life  of  the  nation,  historical  associa- 
tions grow  up  around  it,  and  blended  with  their  traditions 
it  passes  sacredly  from  the  fathers  to  the  children,  and 
constitutes  in  its  wide  domain  the  heritage  and  the  home- 
stead of  the  people.1 

1  "  The  land  is  the  essential  condition  of  the  normal  and  moral  development 
of  the  state,  and  therefore  it  is  absolutely  holy  and  inalienable.  It  is  here  that 
the  real  moral  spirit  of  the  love  of  the  father-land  rests:  originally  it  is  a  love  of 
one's  native  land,  and  always  retains  this  natural  element,  but  in  its  complete- 
ness it  is  wholly  interpenetrated  with  this  consciousness  of  a  moral  relation. 
Therefore  the  true  love  of  the  father-land  exists  only  when  a  people  has  alreadv 
attained  to  the  life  of  the  nation.  The  merely  economic  society  has  nothing  of 
this."  —  Rothe's  Theologische  JEthik,  vol.  ii.  p.  123. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    NATION    THE    INSTITUTION    OF    RIGHTS. 

THE  nation  is  a  moral  person.  This  prescribes  the 
province  of  rights  and  the  province  of  freedom.  The 
ground  of  these  is  in  no  formal  system  of  laws,  and  no 
abstract  system  of  thought.  On  this  ground  alone,  their 
provinces  are  removed  from  the  arbitrary  limitations  of  for- 
mulas and  abstractions. 

Personality  has  its  condition  and  its  realization  in  free- 
dom. Personality  is  constituted  in  self-determination  ;  one 
whose  action  is  self-determined  is  a  person.1 

The  human  personality  subsists  in  the  divine  personality ; 
as  it  is  realized  in  the  moral  life,  it  is  derivative  from  God, 
and  has  its  fulfillment  in  God.  It  comes  not  in  entire  for- 
getfulness  ;  whether  it  looks  within  or  without,  it  gazes  into 
no  abysmal  depths.  It  is  not  attained  through  negations ; 
its  necessary  being  is  not  ascertained  in  a  law  of  thought, 
as  in  the  formula  of  Spinoza,  nor  by  a  rule  of  subtraction, 
as  in  the  resultant  of  Comte.  It  does  not  recede  into 
nothingness,  it  does  not  pass  into  vacancy.  In  its  begin- 
ning it  is  formed  in  relationships,  and  in  its  development  it 
is  not  severed  from  them,  but  there  is  the  fuller  expres- 
sion of  them.  These  relations  are  not  the  result  of  the 
reflection,  nor  of  the  volition  of  man,  and  man  is  not 
their  centre.  In  the  realization  of  these  relations  man 
is  always  brought  nearer  to  Him  in  whom  they  have  their 
consistence,  and  in  whom  is  the  perfect  unity. 

The  central  attribute  of  personality  is  the  will.  The  will 
in  its  freedom  is  defined  in  no  formal  or  empty  notion ;  it 

1  "  A  being  endowed  with  self-consciousness,  reason,  and  freedom,  is  called  a 
person,  or  has  personality."  —  Ahren's  Naturrecht,  p.  83. 


THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION   OF  EIGHTS.  73 

is  the  self-determination  of  a  person,  and  that  alone  is 
free.  The  determination,  in  the  realization  of  personality, 
acting  in  freedom,  is  in  the  fulfillment  of  law,  but  the 
law  thus  is  necessarily  not  abstract  nor  formal ;  it  is  not 
external,  it  is  a  law  implied  in  the  being  and  the  realiza- 
tion of  personality,  and  the  fulfillment  of  which  is  the  end 
of  its  being ;  it  is  in  its  highest  conception  the  will  of  God. 

The  mere  formal  notion  of  the  will  and  of  its  freedom, 
which  separates  it  from  its  substance  in  personality  and 
empties  it  of  all  content,  could  not  form  the  principle  of 
rights.  It  could  produce  a  scheme  concerning  rights,  but 
not  the  realization  of  rights  ;  it  could  result  in  a  system, 
but  not  in  the  nation. 

Rights  belong  to  man,  since  in  his  nature  he  is  consti- 
tuted as  a  person.  Personality,  since  it  has  its  origin  in 
God,  has  an  infinite  sacredness.  This  is  the  ground  of  the 
sacredness  of  the  rights  of  man.  The  individual  personal- 
ity can  therefore  be  apprehended  rightly  only  in  this  con- 
ception, —  the  life  of  each  must  be  held  sacred,  his  worth 
must  be  allowed,  his  dignity  must  be  regarded,  his  freedom 
must  have  in  the  nation  its  maintenance  and  its  sphere. 

It  is  only  in  his  personality,  in  his  moral  being  and 
freedom,  that  man  has  rights  beyond  the  other  animals. 
In  the  necessary  sequence  of  physical  nature  there  is  no 
ground  for  rights.  It  is  because  man  exists  also  in  a  moral 
world,  which  is  in  freedom,  that  he  has  rights. 

The  realization  of  personality  is  manifested  in  the  am- 
pler institution  of  rights.  For  rights  in  the  nation  are  the 
asserting  and  the  positing  of  personality,  in  the  external 
sphere,  through  its  self-determination  which  is  its  freedom. 
They  are  the  process  in  which  personality  affirms  itself 
and  attains  recognition  in  the  nation.  Thus  also,  reverse- 
.y,  the  decay  arid  loss  or  abandonment  of  rights  is  con- 
nected with  a  low  and  a  false  conception  of  man,  and 
presumes  always  the  degradation  of  personality. 

Rights  belong  to  man,  as  tnan  is  made  in  the  image 
of  God ;  they  are  his  by  nature ;  they  belong  to  him  in 


74  THE  NATION. 

his  original  constitution.  Thus  the  condition  of  their  ex- 
istence, as  of  their  sacredness,  is  in  the  nature  of  man,  as 
it  is  in  the  divine  image. 

Rights  have  their  foundation  in  the  nature  of  man. 

Personality  manifests  itself  in  the  realization  of  rights ; 
all  rights  are  of  a  person. 

Rights  express  and  define  the  relation  of  a  person  in 
the  nation,  to  the  nation,  and  to  other  persons. 

The  fundamental  law  of  rights  is,  —  Be  a  person,  and 
respect  others  as  persons.1 

The  nation  is  the  institution  of  rights.  The  primary 
distinction  of  rights  is  of  Natural  and  of  Positive  Rights. 
Rights  are  natural,  as  laid  in  the  nature  of  man  ;  rights 
are  positive  as  defined  in  the  nation.  Rights  are  natural 
as  immanent  in  the  nature  of  man  ;  rights  are  positive 
as  emanent  in  the  nation. 

Rights  are  natural,  as  founded  in  human  nature.  They 
are  inherent ;  they  are  written  in  the  law  and  the  consti- 
tution of  the  being  of  man.  These  rights  are  variously 
denominated  in  the  various  representations  of  their  con- 
tent and  form. 

Blackstone  calls  them  absolute  rights.  But  this  is  inex- 
•act  and  indefinite  ;  the  freedom  of  man  is  not  absolute, 
and  no  rights  are  absolute.  The  rights  which  Blackstone 
enumerates  are  all  subject  to  modification.  There  are 
none  which  may  not  be  abridged  or  yielded  or  interrupted, 
and  none  which  have  a  perfect  realization. 

1  Hegel's  Philosophie  des  Rechts,  p.  72.  Stahl's  Philosophiz  des  Rechts,  vol.  ii. 
see.  i.  p.  331.  Michelet's  Naturrecht,  vol.  i.  p.  143. 

"  The  ultimate  ground  of  the  rights  of  a  person  is  therein  that  man  is  made 
in  the  image  of  God."  —  Stahl,  vol.  ii.  sec.  i.  p.  331. 

This  law  is  the  ground  of  social  laws,  the  unwritten  laws  of  manners  and  the 
substance  of  the  character  of  the  gentleman.  It  is  the  assertion  of  a  person- 
ality, and  a  deference  for  it  in  others.  This  has  had,  perhaps,  its  finest  illustra- 
tion in  the  character  of  the  Quaker.  It  has  no  ground  in  a  formal  distinction 
of  classes,  and  the  very  quality  of  vulgarity  is  a  respect  for  the  accidents  of 
life  and  a  deference  to  them. 


THE  NATION   THE  INSTITUTION   OF  RIGHTS.  75 

They  have  been  called  inalienable  rights,  but  there  is  no 
right  which  has  its  institution  in  the  external  sphere,  that 
is,  the  sphere  defined  by  law,  that  is  inalienable.  The 
right  of  the  nation  is  necessarily  precedent  to  the  rights 
of  the  individual,  and  they  are  all  limited  by  it  in  its  sut 
preme  necessity.  They  must  yield  also  to  its  force,  as,  fof 
instance,  life  is  subject  to  the  call  of  the  state  in  war  and 
its  calamities,  property  is  subject  to  its  claim  in  taxation, 
liberty  may  be  interrupted  in  the  peril  of  the  whole,  and 
is  forfeited  by  crime  or  the  suspicion  of  crime,  and  in  its 
simplest  phase  is  restricted,  as  when  one  is  compelled  by 
the  police,  in  a  stoppage  in  the  street,  to  retrace  his  steps, 
or  take  another  route.  The  phrase  inalienable,  as  applied 
to  rights,  had  its  source  in  the  theory  of  the  social  com- 
pact, in  which  certain  rights  are  regarded  as  alienated  for 
a  certain  consideration  to  society,  in  order  to  secure  the 
balance.  It  had  a  certain  advantage  against  governments 
which  were  denying  all  natural  rights,  and  encroaching 
arbitrarily  on  positive  rights,  but  its  consistence  is  only  in 
the  legal  fiction  which  it  presumes. 

Mr.  Hurd  describes  these  rights,  while  limiting  them  to 
the  civil  sphere,  as  individual  rights,  and  Dr.  Lieber,  as 
primordial  rights.  But  neither  phrase  is  comprehensive 
of  them,  and  neither  has  passed  into  common  use.  They 
have  no  historical  justification,  and  the  assertion  of  these 
rights  in  history  has  not  been  from  academies  or  courts, 
but  from  the  common  people.  The  term  natural  rights  is 
the  more  simple  and  the  more  exact.  It  is  the  less  likely 
to  allow  injury  to  rights  through  arbitrary  notions.  It  in- 
dicates the  origin  and  the  content  of  rights.  It  has  a 
better  place  in  the  common  Jhought  of  men,  and  may  be 
trusted  to  hold  its  own,  in  the  long  run,  against  a  more 
scholastic  term.1 

1  Kurd's  Law  of  Freedom,  etc.,  vol.  i.  p.  36.    Lieber's  Political  Ethics,  vol.  i. 
p.  281. 
The  declaration  of  principles  at  the  close  of  the  War  of  the  Revolution  was, 


76  THE  NATION. 

These  rights  cannot  be  referred  to  the  assumed  existence 
of  man  in  an  imaginary  state  of  nature,  which  is  repre- 
sented as  the  presocial  state.  Blackstone  refers  them  to 
an  antecedent  state  of  nature,  and  describes  them  as 
rights  -which  every  man  is  entitled  to  enjoy,  whether  out 
of  society  or  in  it.1  But  this  assumed  state  is  unreal,  and 
if  man  be  represented  as  out  of  society,  there  is  no  limit 
to  his  action  which  can  be  defined  in  rights,  and  no  power 
by  which  the  title  to  rights  can  be  conferred.  The  title 
to  these  rights  is  affirmed  and  acknowledged  only  in  the 
organization  of  society.  This  definition  has  its  consistency 
also  only  in  the  fiction  of  the  social  compact. 

These  rights  cannot  be  referred  to  the  assumed  exist- 
ence of  man  in  an  atomic  state.  Thus  Kent  describes 
them  as  rights  which  belong  to  individuals  in  a  single  un- 
connected state.2  But  this  atomic  state  is  also  unreal. 
Man  does  not  exist  in  this  isolation  and  cannot  be  rightly 
conceived  apart  from  relations,  and  as  these  relations  had 
not  their  origin  in  the  volition  or  reflection  of  the  indi- 
vidual, he  cannot  make  them  as  though  they  had  not  been. 
The  conception  rests  also  upon  a  fiction. 

There  is  no  necessity  of  assuming  an  imaginary  state  of 
nature  in  order  to  ascertain  the  foundation  of  natural 
rights.  The  consistent  result  of  its  assumption  has  been 


in  the  words  of  the  Continental  Congress  to  the  people,  —  "  Let  it  be  remem- 
bered, that  it  has  been  the  pride  and  the  boast  of  America,  that  the  rights  for 
which  she  has  contended  were  the  rights  of  human  nature."  —  April,  1783. 
Journal  of  the  Continental  Congress,  vol.  viii.  p.  201. 

1  "The  rights  of  persons  are  of  two  sorts,  absolute  and  relative:  absolute 
which  are  such  as  appertain  and  belong  to  particular  men,  merely  as  individu- 
als, or  single  persons ;  relative,  which  are  incident  to  them  as  members  of  so- 
ciety, or  standing  in  various  relations  to  each  other. 

*'  By  the  absolute  rights  of  individuals  we  mean  those  which  are  so  in  their  pri- 
mary and  strictest  sense ;  such  as  would  belong  to  their  persons  merely  in  a 
state  of  nature,  and  which  every  man  is  entitled  to  enjoy  whether  out  of  so- 
ciety or  in  it."  —  1  Bl.  Comm.,  123. 

2  "  The  rights  of  persons  in  private  life  are  either  absolute,  being  such  as  be- 
long to  individuals  in  a  single  unconnected  state ;  or  relative,  being  those  which 
arise  from  the  civil  and  domestic  relations."  —  2  Kent's  Comm.  1. 


7  r 

THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION   OF  EIGHTS.  77 

[ways  the  construction  of  an  abstract  system.  These 
flits  in  their  origin  and  their  content  can  be  referred 
ily  to  the  nature  of  man.  Their  foundation  is  in  no 
>here  of  external  circumstance,  and  in  no  estate  or  con- 
don  of  life,  but  in  the  constitution  of  man.  They  are 
rights  of  human  nature,  and  their  derivation  is  signi- 
fied in  the  image  in  which  that  nature  is  made.  They  are 
the  primal  prerogatives  of  humanity.  They  have  not  their 
origin  in  human  enactments,  but  determine  the  just  con- 
tent of  those  enactments.  They  are  imprescriptible  ;  the 
image  in  which  they  are  given  is  effaced  by  no  priestly 
illusions,  and  is  extinguished  in  no  imperial  obscurantism  ; 
they  are  not  wholly  buried  beneath  the  most  artificial  of 
policies,  and  are  worn  out  by  no  continuance  of  customs, 
although  lying  "  heavy  as  frost  and  deep  almost  as  life." 

Rights  are  positive,  as  enacted  in  the  law  and  em- 
bodied in  the  institutions  of  the  nation.  Positive  rights 
are  the  determinate  expression  of  natural  rights,  in  the 
formal  Civil  and  Political  process.  They  are  rights  as 
they  receive  the  recognition  of  the  state  and  are  affirmed 
by  it  and  in  it.  Positive  rights  are  therefore  the  institutes 
in  which  the  progress  of  the  people  is  actualized,  and  they 
define  the  extent  of  its  advancement. 

Rights  are  positive,  since  their  necessary  definition  and 
institution  is  in  law.  It  is  only  as  they  are  affirmed  in 
law,  that  rights  obtain  their  necessary  obligation  and  their 
common  recognition.  Their  permanence  is  secured  and 
they  become  binding .  upon  all.  It  is  because  there  is  in 
law  this  authorization  of  rights,  that  the  law  itself  in  the 
course  of  the  organic  people  is  never  stationary ;  it  does 
not  reach  a  final  enactment ;  it  is  not  closed  in  an  imperial 
code.  Yet  in  law  there  is  only  the  formal  recognition,  the 
deposition  of  rights,  it  is  not  creative  of  them. 

Rights  are  positive,  since  their  attainment  is  in  the  his- 
torical progress  of  the  people.  They  are  apprehended  and 


78  THE  NATION. 

then  actualized  in  its  development.  They  are  affirmed  in 
the  growth  of  its  self-assertion  and  self-respect.  There  is 
in  the  nation  a  continuous  advance,  and  in  no  single  mo- 
ment of  its  existence  can  it  be  conceived  as  the  ultimate 
and  perfect  state.  The  spirit  of  the  people  perishes  in 
that  oriental  immobility.  The  rights  which  are  asserted 
in  the  nation  become  thus  the  signs  of  its  progress.  They 
are  the  landmarks  of  the  march  of  the  people ;  and  since 
its  rights  are  the  realization  of  an  organic  and  moral 
being,  there  is  no  definite  terminus  to  its  advance. 

Rights  are  positive,  since  every  nation  has  its  own  voca- 
tion in  history,  and  in  each,  rights  are  formed  in  its  course, 
and  become  the  reflex  of  its  aim.  They  are  wrought  out 
in  its  vocation,  and  bear  the  clear  imprint  of  its  character. 
They  have  in  every  people  the  same  universal  ground 
and  end,  as  this  in  each  is  the  fulfillment  in  a  moral  order 
of  the  life  of  humanity  ;  but  in  the  purpose  and  the  free- 
dom of  the  people  their  manifestation  has  a  definite  type, 
and  they  are  moulded  in  conformance  to  it. 

Rights  are  positive,  since  they  are  instituted  in  the  na- 
tion, in  a  certain  sphere  of  external  circumstance.  They 
are  thus  affected  by  the  external  relations  of  the  people. 
The  laws  in  which  they  are  established  are  modified  by 
the  age,  the  race,  the  association  with  other  peoples,  and 
then  also  by  the  physical  condition,  the  soil,  the  climate, 
the  products  ;  by  agriculture,  and  commerce,  and  trade  ;  by 
all  those  elements  which,  in  the  necessary  relation  of  man 
in  physical  nature,  so  clearly  affect,  while  they  do  not  de- 
termine, national  and  individual  development.  But  it  is 
only  a  recent  school  which  has  held  this  in  so  narrow  and 
exclusive  a  notion  as  to  make  all  human  freedom  a  fic- 
tion, and  to  leave  to  man  only  the  poor  pretense  but  not 
the  reality  of  rights. 

Positive  rights,  therefore,  are  natural  rights,  as  they  are 
ascertained  and  affirmed  in  the  normal  Civil  and  Political 
process.  It  is  only  in  law,  in  which  this  process  consists, 


THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION   OF  RIGHTS.  79 

that  natural  rights  obtain  their  necessary  form.  They  have 
apart  from  this  neither  the  requisite  precision,  nor  the  ob- 
ligation which  secures  their  authority  and  validity.  They 
are  the  principle  to  determine  the  action  of  the  whole 
people,  but  in  law  alone  they  become  the  necessary  form 
for  the  action  of  the  whole  people.  In  certain  rights  there 
is  always  a  vagueness,  since  that  which  in  itself,  for  in- 
stance, is  determined  in  the  development  of  the  individual 
and  the  nation,  is  to  obtain  a  formal  determination  in  law. 
Thus  the  time  when  the  majority  of  the  individual  begins, 
and  the  qualifications  by  which  an  elector  is  ascertained, 
are  illustrations  of  this.  But  the  principle  to  be  regarded 
in  these  instances  is,  that  the  state  shall  not  determine 
them  arbitrarily  but  in  the  reason  of  the  state. 

The  relation  of  Natural  and  Positive  rights  has  been 
represented  in  two  opposite  conceptions,  each  of  which 
involves  an  error.1 

The  one  proposition  isolates  the  sphere  of  natural  from 
the  sphere  of  positive  rights ;  they  are  defined  as  existent 
in  an  external  and  formal  separation.  The  ultimate 
ground  of  natural  rights  is  assumed  in  the  nature  of  per- 
sons, or  the  nature  of  things,  and  from  it  they  proceed  ; 
the  ultimate  ground  of  positive  rights  in  the  determination 
of  the  state,  and  from  it  they  proceed,  but  there  is  no  nec- 
essary relation  between  them,  nor  do  positive  rights,  in 
the  normal  process  of  the  nation,  exist  in  the  recognition 
and  institution  of  natural  rights. 

This  conception  has  its  source  in  the  antithesis  of  natu- 
ral and  political  society,  in  which  a  definite  existence  is 
assumed  for  the  former,  and  the  latter  is  held  in  its  sepa- 
ration as  an  artificial  existence  ;  the  foundation  of  society 

1  Aristotle  distinguishes  between  a  natural  right  which  is  everywhere  alike 
*ulid,  <t>v<riK6v;  and  a  positive  right  which  is  right  only  as  being  established, 
VOMUCQV;  but  as  Stahl  says,  so  far  as  Aristotle  defines  them,  they  are  placed  in 
external  and  separate  spheres.  —  Aristotle's  Ethics,  bk.  v.  ch.  vii. 


80  THE  NATION. 

is  laid  in  contractual  law,  and  its  structure  is  formed  of 
conventional  rights.  This  distinction  was  prominent  in  the 
thought  of  the  last  century.  It  was  the  formalism  which 
held  the  same  separation  in  natural  and  revealed  religion, 
and  then  in  natural  and  political  rights,  in  natural  and 
artificial  society.  It  appears  in  two  men  who  wrought  with 
the  deepest  influence  upon  their  age,  each  working  steadily 
and  faithfully  in  it,  becoming  thereby  the  teachers  of  an- 
other age,  and  while  wide  apart,  yet  aiding  toward  the 
discovery  of  a  deeper  unity,  —  it  appears  in  those  in  whom 
was  the  strength  and  weakness  of  the  age,  —  Burke  and 
Rousseau.  Burke  opposed  the  notion  which  founds  so- 
ciety upon  the  dogmas  and  theories  of  an  abstract  specula- 
tion, and  fabricates  it  after  an  arbitrary  scheme  and  an 
empty  metaphysic  ;  instead  of  this,  he  maintained  its  exist- 
ence as  a  structure  of  acquired  rights,  and  held  the  nation 
in  its  life  to  be  identical  with  these,  so  that  the  form  itself 
became  sacred,  and  rights  whose  origin  was  in  accident  or 
in  custom,  shared  in  the  permanence  and  the  sacredness 
of  the  life  of  the  nation  :  Rousseau  opposed  the  notion 
which  founds  society  upon  conventional  rights,  and  regards 
the  state  as  an  accumulation  of  rights,  which,  originating 
in  an  accident,  are  to  be  perpetuated  inviolate  with  the  in- 
violateness  of  the  state  itself;  instead  of  this,  sweeping 
away  the  existent  organization  and  the  whole  existent 
polity,  he  maintained  the  inauguration  of  a  new  order, 
constructed  in  accordance  with  the  abstract  reason.  The 
one  merged  the  nation  into  the  formalism  of  history,  the 
other  into  the  formalism  of  thought. 

The  proposition  which  thus  isolates  the  province  of 
natural  and  positive  rights,  and  locates  each  in  a  formal 
and  external  sphere,  has  its  refutation  in  that  the  nation 
itself  is  the  natural  and  the  normal  process  of  human  so- 
ciety. It  is  the  postulate  in  political  science,  of  Aristotle, 
whose  solid  vantage  is  the  defense  from  so  many  errors, 
"  man  is  by  nature  a  political  being."  The  nation  is  the 


THE  NATION   THE  INSTITUTION   OF  RIGHTS.  81 

manifestation  of  that  which  is  immanent  in  the  nature  of 
man.  It  is  the  legal  fiction  of  the  social  contract  which 
severs  the  state  from  the  natural  life  of  man. 

The  proposition,  moreover,  in  the  detachment  of  positive 
from  natural  rights,  allows  to  the  former  no  ground  but  an 
accidental  succession,  or  a  customary  law,  or  a  contractual 
form,  or  an  arbitrary  power.  It  can  only  be  justified  in 
the  origin  of  the  nation  in  force,  or  in  the  accident  of  his- 
tory, or  in  the  "  use  which  custom  bends."  But  this  is  the 
unreason  of  the  state,  and  it  can  then  no  longer  be  com- 
prehended in  the  moral  order  which  is  history,  nor  as  the 
constituent  of  that  order.  And  rights  can  allow  no  arbi- 
trary basis,  for  this  presumes  a  contradiction,  and  it  is  not 
in  its  own  inclination  or  in  its  indifferent  choice,  that  the 
nation  may  determine  their  existence  and  whether  they 
shall  or  shall  not  be.  If,  however,  rights  do  not  consist 
in  the  being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  person,  and  if  a 
merely  formal  limitation  be  allowed,  then  in  their  restric- 
tion to  a  part,  they  may  be  always  confined  to  an  indi- 
vidual, or  a  family,  or  a  class,  for  their  only  basis  is  arbi- 
trary. 

But  this  isolation  of  natural  and  positive  rights  is  the 
sequence  of  a  formalism  which  identifies  the  nation  with 
its  external  organization.  Positive  rights  have  in  nat- 
ural rights  their  content,  and  their  immutable  ground,  and 
therein  alone  the  nation  is  constituted  in  the  realization,  in 
a  moral  order,  of  that  which  is  immanent  in  society.1 

The  opposite  proposition  identifies  the  sphere  of  natural 
and  positive  rights  ;  it  assumes  for  natural  rights,  in  them- 
selves, a  valid  existence,  and  makes  them  then  the  neces- 
sary and  supreme  law.  In  ihe  conception  of  natural 
rights  it  finds  the  boundary  and  description  of  positive 
rights,  and  the  scope  of  the  latter  is  held  as  coterminal 

1  The  entire  severance  of  natural  and  political  rights,  where  Burke  in  no  way 
appears  clear  from  the  confusions  of  his  age,  has  heen  maintained  in  a  distinc- 
tion in  which  natural  rights  are  regarded  as  essential,  and  positive  as  accidental ; 


82  THE  NATION. 

with  the  apprehension  of  the  former.  The  distinction  of 
rights  in  their  conception  and  in  their  formal  institution  is 
obliterated.  That  which  is  deemed  a  natural  right  is  as- 
sumed to  be  already  the  law,  and  to  possess  an  immediate 
validity. 

This  merges  the  whole  order  of  the  state  into  the  sub- 
jective conception  of  the  individual ;  the  organic  action  of 
the  whole  ceases,  and  its  conduct  is  left  to  the  determina- 
tion of  the  private  judgment.  Its  course  is  no  longer  de- 
fined in  the  formula  of  law  and  in  institutions.  It  is  no 
more  the  expression  of  an  authority,  which  is  over  every 
individual,  and  to  which  each  alike  is  subject ;  its  language 
is  no  longer  esto  but  only  videtur.  This  is  the  elevation 
of  the  private  opinion  of  the  individual  into  the  place  of 
the  government  of  the  whole.  Its  only  issue  is  the  set- 
ting up  of  a  popular  absolutist,  the  dissolution  of  the  state 
into  its  atomy,  and  the  inauguration  of  a  conflict  of  each 
against  all. 

As  natural  rights  are  held  in  the  subjective  conception 
of  the  individual,  they  have  not  the  clearness  which  is 
requisite  to  a  law  which  shall  be  the  form  of  action  for  the 
whole.  They  are  vague,  and  the  condition  of  rights  is 
that  they  shall  be  defined  in  a  form  which  shall  enable 
them  to  be  held  with  decision.  They  are  to  be  sustained 
against  injury,  and  are  to  be  obligatory  upon  all,  and  there- 
fore it  is  necessary  that  they  should  have  so  clear  an  ex- 
pression that  they  may  be  enforced  over  all,  but  they  obtain 
this  only  as  they  are  asserted  in  a  positive  form  in  the  civil 
and  political  organization. 


natural  rights  as  universal,  and  positive  rights  as  limited  to  a  part.  But  if 
positive  rights  are  accidental,  then  the  state,  as  the  process  of  rights,  can  be  re- 
garded only  as  the  accident  of  history;  and  personality,  moreover,  is  not  deter- 
mined in  accidents,  but  in  its  own  determination  is  the  realization  of  order. 
The  definition,  also,  while  limiting  positive  rights  to  a  part,  fails  to  define  this 
part  and  the  ground  in  which  it  is  ascertained,  and  in  its  separation  also  of  nat- 
ural from  positive  rights,  it  leaves  the  former  a  mere  abstraction,  since  rights 
are  valid  only  in  their  positive  institution. 


THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION   OF  RIGHTS.  83 

The  proposition  is  also  inconsistent  with  the  existence 
of  the  nation  in  its  historical  development.  There  is  in 
its  advance  a  constant  outcome  of  rights.  It  is  not  the 
application  of  a  perfect  system  of  natural  rights,  for  which 
there  is  to  be  assumed  the  authority  of  positive  law.  The 
whole  hody  of  rights  can  no  more  come  forth  complete  in 
a  single  moment  than  can  the  nation  itself.  And  the  indi- 
vidual subjective  conception  can  in  no  moment  assume  to 
be  the  law  or  the  measure  of  this  advance.  It  is  mani- 
fested always  in  the  development  of  the  spirit  of  the  or- 
ganic people,  and  no  single  age  can  apprehend  or  attain  a 
final  and  perfect  embodiment  of  rights.  While  there  is  in 
the  definition  of  natural  rights  in  an  abstract  system,  the 
weak  attraction  of  a  certain  intellectual  proportion,  it  is 
yet  an  empty  notion  which  regards  rights  thus  as  complete 
in  a  system,  which,  when  received  from  the  schools,  is  to 
be  analyzed  and  applied  by  the  people. 

There  is  a  tendency,  which  this  proposition  illustrates, 
to  forget  that  rights  are  and  can  be  real,  only  as  they  are 
established  in  the  civil  and  political  organization.  They 
are  slowly,  and  only  with  toil  and  endeavor,  enacted  in 
laws,  and  moulded  in  institutions.  It  is  only  with  care 
and  steadiness  and  tenacity  of  purpose  that  those  guaran- 
ties are  forged  which  are  the  securance  of  freedom,  and 
they  are  to  be  clinched  and  riveted  to  be  strong  for  de- 
fense and  against  assault.  The  rhetoric  which  holds  the 
loftier  abstract  conception,  avails  nothing,  until  in  the 
constructive  grasp  and  tentative  skill  of  those  who  appre- 
hend the  conditions  of  positive  rights,  it  is  shaped  and 
formed  in  the  process  of  the  state.  The  former  is  often 
the  quality  of  some  individual  thinker,  whose  ideal  is  cold 
also  in  its  distant  elevation,  and  who,  regarding  in  events 
only  the  conflict  of  ideas,  is  indifferent  to  the  real  life  of 
men  and  nations,  and  this  indifference  may  become,  when 
his  own  ideal  is  unrecognized,  the  ground  only  of  the 
scorn  of  an  unsympathizing  imagination  —  not  the  noble- 


84  THE  NATION. 

ness  but  the  weakness  of  disdain :  the  latter  is  the  work 
of  the  statesman  who  alone  knows  how  patient  and  vigil- 
ant is  the  toil  which  is  the  condition  of  the  institution  of 
rights,  and  how  wary  and  bitter  is  the  antagonism  of  the 
forces,  from  whose  selfish  grasp  the  ampler  field  of  rights 
is  wrested,  and  who  forgets  in  no  immediate  end  the  long 
result  to  be  attained,  nor  in  the  exultation  of  momentary 
success,  or  the  discouragement  of  momentary  failure,  how 
firmly  and  how  broadly  rights,  to  be  secure,  must  be  en- 
acted in  the  laws,  and  moulded  in  the  institutions  of  the 
state. 

There  is  a  tendency,  which  this  proposition  also  illus- 
trates, to  represent  natural  rights  as  construed  in  some 
system,  and  to  regard  the  nation  as  an  external  structure 
to  be  erected  in  conformance  to  it.  The  nation  is  to  be 
shaped  by  these  political  architects  after  certain  specu- 
lative abstractions.  The  whole  existent  organization  is  to 
be  destroyed  to  effect  some  end  of  the  individual  thinker, 
and  again  to  be  built  anew  in  the  individual  design.  Then 
all  institutions  that  have  not  the  exact  proportions  of  the 
momentary  schedule  are  to  be  leveled  to  the  ground,  and 
all  that  has  been  achieved  in  the  work  and  sacrifice  of  gen- 
erations must  make  room  for  a  structure  designed  in  the 
individual  conceit.  It  is  this  spirit,  which  is  the  evil  of 
fanaticism,  that  appears  as  a  vain  and  destructive  force. 
When  there  follows  the  wreck  of  the  whole  existent  organi- 
zation, it  can  find  in  the  abstract  reason  the  ground  onl* 
of  a  formal  order,  and  its  work,  out  of  a  prior  system  of 
independent  rights,  can  result  only  in  a  formal  unity.  But 
the  nation  is  not  such  that  it  may  be  constantly  taken  down 
and  rebuilt  again  ;  the  city  walls,  when  they  are  torn  away, 
may  be  piled  up  from  the  quarries  of  the  hills,  as  gath- 
ered stones,  but  it  is  not  thus  in  the  political  life  of  the 
people.  And  when  this  destructive  course  is  begun  there 
is  no  limit  to  it,  but,  as  the  nation  is  reconstructed  after 
some  abstract  conception,  it  comes  to  be  regarded  as  only 


THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION  OF  EIGHTS.  85 

an  external  order,  and  there  is  the  justification  for  some 
further  change  in  some  new  theory.  But  stability  is  the 
condition  of  growth,  and  the  furthest  advance  of  a  single 
generation  is  slight  in  comparison  with  that  which  is  em- 
bodied in  the  nation,  in  the  long  result  of  time  ;  and  the 
largest  design  of  a  single  individual  is  contracted  before 
that  which  is  attained  in  the  vocation  of  the  nation  in  his- 
tory. This  conception  can  only  appear  in  an  unhistorical 
age,  and  in  the  extremes,  —  the  provincial  and  cosmopoli- 
tan theories  which  coincide  in  their  denial  of  the  organic 
and  moral  being  of  the  nation.  Its  source  is  in  the  false 
and  deceptive  exaltation  of  the  individual,  and  it  be- 
comes in  its  assumption  of  the  individual  phase  of  the 
conception  of  natural  rights,  as  the  law  of  the  action  of 
the  state,  the  precedent  of  a  mere  egoism. 

The  proposition  in  defining  the  relation  of  Natural  and 
Positive  rights,  which  isolates  the  province  of  each,  and 
locates  each  in  a  separate  and  external  sphere,  and  the 
proposition  which  identifies  them,  so  that  the  individual 
conception  or  system  of  natural  rights  is  apprehended  as 
the  immediate  formula  of  action  in  the  nation,  are  alike 
without  justification. 

In  their  necessary  relation,  natural  rights  have  their  de- 
termination in  positive  law,  — the  formula  of  positive  rights. 
Natural  rights  are  the  content  of  which  positive  rights  are 
the  form  ;  natural  rights  are  the  ground  of  action,  posi- 
tive rights  the  law  of  action.  The  relation  is  not  one  of 
identity  nor  of  difference,  but  of  development  through 
content  into  form.1 

Natural  rights  in  their  positive  determination,  are  fur- 
ther defined  as  they  are  determined  in  the  Civil  or  the  Po- 

1  Melancthon  has  a  passage,  cited  by  Hegel,  —  "  Verum  quia  jus  positivum 
determinatio  est  juris  naturalis,  facile  intelligi  potest,  jus  positum  tamen  ha- 
bere  aliquam  regulam  videlicet,  ne  pugnet  cum  jure  natural!." 

"  Alle  rechtsbildung  hat  clanach  ein  doppeltes  moment,  ein  Gottlich-nothwen- 
diges  (naturrechtliches)  und  ein  menschlich-freie  (positives)  und  beide  durch- 
dringen  sich  ohne  abgranzung,  bestehen  in  untrennbarer  einheit."  —  Stahl, 
Philosophic  des  Rechts,  vol.  ii.  sec.  i.  p.  220. 


86  THE  NATION. 

litical  process  in  the  nation.  Civil  rights  belong  to  the 
jural ;  political  rights  to  the  moral  organization  of  the 
nation  :  civil  rights  are  those  in  which  the  individual  ob- 
tains protection ;  political  rights  are  those  in  which  the 
person  obtains  a  realized  freedom :  civil  rights  belong  to 
every  one  who  is  subject  to  the  authority  of  the  state  ; 
political  rights  belong  to  every  person  who  is  a  member  of 
the  state :  civil  rights  define  private  relations ;  political 
rights  define  public  relations :  civil  rights  are  asserted  in 
the  jurisprudential  order ;  political  rights  in  the  constitu- 
tional organization  of  the  political  people :  civil  rights  at- 
tach to  the  province  of  private  law ;  political  rights  to  the 
province  of  public  law  :  civil  rights  are  resident  in  the 
commonwealth  ;  political  rights  in  the  nation. 

Civil  rights  are  commonly  designated  as  the  right  of 
personal  security,  of  personal  liberty,  'and  of  property ; 
or  the  right  of  life,  of  liberty,  of  property ;  to  these  is  to 
be  added  the  right  of  access  to  the  course  of  law,  in  which 
the  preceding  are  sustained,  or  the  right  to  the  protection 
of  the  law  —  the  equality  before  the  law. 

The  right  of  personal  security  or  of  life,  is  simply  the 
right  to  existence,  the  same  right,  as  has  been  said,  which 
one  has  to  be  where  he  is,  that  Kearsarge  or  Cape  Cod 
has  to  be  where  it  is ;  it  embraces  the  right  to  the  body, 
to  health,  to  the  limbs,  to  the  senses  and  their  use.  There 
is  often  connected  with  this  the  right  to  reputation,  and 
this  as  a  right  is  also  indicative  of  the  worth  and  dignity 
of  a  person.  From  real  honor,  which  is  in  man,  it  is  true 
that  none  can  detract,  and  real  integrity  is  beyond  earthly 
moil,  but  there  is  the  right  to  the  consideration  in  the  ex- 
ternal order  of  the  worth  of  personality,  and  this  right 
consists  in  the  defense  and  maintenance  in  the  external 
sphere  of  the  integrity  of  the  individual.1 

1  Mr.  Spencer  places  the  right  to  reputation  on  the  basis  of  property,  —  "  Rep- 
utation, as  a  thing  which  men  strive  to  acquire  and  preserve,  may  be  regarded 


/       /- 

THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION  OF,  BIGHTS.    J  /  jSl 

/>  '  ^  I 

The  right  of  personal  liberty  is.  th^  right  OP  ^xternal  <i    ^ 
freedom  ;  it  embraces  the   right  to  locomotion-';  the  pfht 


on-';, 

to  labor,  —  to  earn  one's  bread  in  the  sweat  or  o'nVs;  brow  f 
the  right  to  unrestricted  action  in  the  choice  of  the  -y  ^ca- 
tion and  occupation  of  the  individual.      There  musjt   oe| 
freedom  to  come  and  go,  and  freedom  of  action,  and 


in  the  state  for  the  individuality  of  each  to  work  outward  ; 
and  none  can  be  hindered  or  restrained  from  his  vocation, 
and  every  occupation  is  to  be  opened  upon  the  same  con- 
ditions to  all. 

The  right  of  property  is  a  personal  right  in  its  strictest 
form,  and  is  especially  illustrative  in  certain  phases,  of  the 
relation  of  the  individual  and  the  nation.  Its  definition  in 
formulas  and  theories  may  be  traced  through  the  widest 
range  of  legal  and  political  thought,  and  it  bears  the  im- 
press of  the  spirit*  of  all  their  schools.  It  is  more  com- 
plex than  the  preceding,  and  appears  in  more  opposite 
representations  ;  and  in  historical  and  in  recent  theories  it 
has  met  with  strenuous  denial. 

u  Thou  shalt  not  steal,"  were  the  words  of  the  ancient 
Hebrew  commandment,  but  "  la  proprie*te  c'est  le  vol,"  said 
M.  Proudhon,  and  the  inference  was  reached  through  the 
rejection  of  all  ground  on  which  the  right  to  property  has 
been  asserted  in  the  schools  of  economy.  The  Hebrew 
commandment  presumed  the  existence  of  the  nation  ;  it 
presumed  a  will  whose  determination  was  in  righteousness, 
and  in  which  the  nation  had  its  foundation  ;  and  the  exis- 
tence of  property,  then,  was  recognized  as  an  institute  of 
the  nation,  not  its  first  nor  its  main  institute,  but  subse- 
quent to  many  others,  as  the  order  of  the  family,  the 
rest  from  labor  in  the  succession  of  the  week,  and  yet  it  is 
presumed  with  them  and  as  sacred  as  they. 

The  legal  definition  which  has  most  widely  prevailed,  as 


as  property."  —  Social  Statics,  p.  162.  But  the  conception  is  lost  when  placed 
on  any  other  ground  than  the  worth  of  personality.  Am  old  writer  has  said,  — 
"  A  good  name  is  better  than  great  riches." 


88  THE  NATION. 

to  the  ground  of  property  and  of  a  right  to  property,  has 
been  stated  in  the  aphorism  of  Savigny,  —  that  property  is 
founded  on  adverse  possession  matured  by  prescription. 
This  is  simply  the  formula  of  the  course  of  Roman  law. 
It  refers  the  origin  of  property  and  of  the  right  to  property 
to  mere  force,  the  grasp  of  the  "  strong  man  armed  who 
keeps  his  goods  in  peace  ;  "  but  force  is  not  the  source  of  a 
right,  nor  is  the  right  evoked  in  holding  fast  what  one  has 
gotten,  nor  is  its  claim  so  matured  by  the  lapse  of  time,  as 
to  win  that  measure  of  respect  from  the  adverse  that  shall 
overawe  their  desire,  and  prevent  possession  from  yield- 
ing to  the  assault  of  those  who  at  length  in  turn  may 
prove  the  stronger ;  nor  can  the  mere  continuance  of  pos- 
session justify  the  deference  of  men  for  the  institution  of 
property.  The  same  legal  conception  is  repeated  in  a 
more  narrow  form  in  the  phrase  of  Blackstone,  that  in 
occupancy  is  the  origin  of  property  and  of  the  right  to 
property.  But  occupancy  is  only  the  incident  of  property, 
and  not  the  ground  of  it,  nor  of  its  right,  and  the  phrase, 
instead  of  characterizing  the  archaic  condition, — the  prim- 
itive estate  of  man,  from  which  Blackstone  with  his  specu- 
lations journeys  forth,  —  belongs  to  a  later  form  of  society 
and  to  a  complex  system  of  jurisprudence,  and  presumes 
for  its  recognition  an  established  order.1 

These  formulas  indicate  the  line  of  legal  thought,  but 
there  is  a  wider  scope  and  grasp  in  the  theories  which  ap- 
pear in  the  later  periods  of  political  speculation,  and  there 
is  an  advance  in  the  history  of  political  theories  beyond  the 
history  of  legal  formularies.  The  illustration  of  this  is  in 
the  theories  of  Locke,  of  Considerant,  of  Hegel. 

The  proposition  of  Locke  retains  only  an  historical  in- 
terest. Locke  represented  the  land  as  originally  of  no 
value,  and  then  he  made  the  acquisition  of  property  to 
consist  in  the  application  of  labor,  by  which  the  land 
becomes  of  value  to  man  ;  the  land  is  valueless,  and  prop- 

1  See  Maine's  Ancient  Law,  pp.  244  -  248. 


THE  NATION   THE  INSTITUTION   OF  EIGHTS.  '89 

erty  originates  in  work  upon  the  land,  and  in  the  growth 
of  population.  But  this  defines  only  a  certain  mode  of 
acquisition  and  not  the  origin  of  property,  or  of  the  right 
io  property.  It  evades  the  origin  of  property,  for  the  right 
to  work  upon  a  thing  presumes  the  possession  of  or  prop- 
erty in  the  thing,  and  then  the  work  put  upon  it  creates 
a  higher  value,  but  not  the  thing  itself.  And  if  the  in- 
creased value  which  is  the  result  of  labor  be  allowed  to 
the  individual  possessor,  the  increased  value  in  the  greater 
degree  may  be  the  result  of  the  growth  of  population  or 
of  the  good  order  and  government  of  the  whole  ;  but  the 
individual  possessor  has  no  immediate  or  exclusive  right 
to  the  latter  increase  of  value.  The  value  may  also  in 
many  instances  have  been  increased  by  omitting  to  put 
labor  upon  the  land,  as  in  the  wooded  lands  or  the 
mineral  deposits  of  a  country  which  becomes  populated. 
There  is  certainly  in  labor  an  element  of  property,  but 
not  the  origin  of  property  nor  of  the  right  to  property, 
and  in  labor  as  a  physical  force  man  effects  no  result  in 
comparison  with  nature  in  her  constant  change  of  physi- 
cal forms,  in  her  ceaseless  laboratories. 

The  proposition  of  Considerant  is  connected  with  this, 
and  starting  from  another  premise  holds  the  same  posi- 
tion. It  represents  the  physical  world  as  the  common 
good  and  the  gift  of  nature,  and  as  belonging  to  man,  but 
as  yet  undivided,  and  open  to  all  to  come  in  and  take  their 
estate.  Then  no  individual  or  generation  can  claim  pos- 
session before  another,  while  that  which  each  lays  out  upon 
the  land  by  his  labor  is  his  own  possession,  since  it  is  his 
own  creation  and  thus  not  of  nature.  Those,  then,  who 
come  afterward,  not  being  in  actual  possession,  have  also  a 
right  to  the  land,  but  only  to  tlie  land,  not  to  the  improve- 
ment laid  out  upon  it,  which  has  created  its  higher  value. 
But  the  defect  in  this  proposition  at  once  becomes  appar- 
ent when  the  application  is  made.  If  the  actual  pos- 
sessors should  hold  on  to  their  exclusive  possession,  that 


90  THE  NATION. 

would  be  unjust  to  the  new  comers,  who  are  thereby  ex- 
cluded from  possession,  and  have  the  common  gift  and  good 
of  nature  withheld  from  them  ;  therefore  the  actual  pos- 
sessors must  divide  the  possession  of  the  land  with  them, 
but  that  would  be  unjust  to  the  actual  possessors,  since 
the  result  of  their  labor,  and  it  may  be  of  their  fathers' 
labor,  would  be  taken  from  them.  There  is,  there- 
fore, a  compensation  to  be  provided  for  them,  and  this  is 
represented  as  the  security  and  the  equivalent  of  labor. 
Then  since  the  land  cannot  be  usefully  further  divided  in 
this  parcelling  among  all  comers,  the  actual  possessors  must 
provide  for  the  later  comers  employment  and  means  of 
labor  upon  the  land,  and  this  is  rated  as  the  compensation 
in  turn  to  them  for  their  claim  upon  the  land,  as  the  com- 
mon good  and  gift  of  nature,  and  is  held  as  the  equivalent 
to  them  for  their  deprivation  from  it.  It  is  represented  as 
more  than  an  equivalent,  since  it  returns  more  than  could 
be  obtained  from  the  original  good  and  gift  of  nature  in 
fruits,  hunting,  fishing,  etc. 

This  proposition  assumes  a  law  of  compensation,  and  an 
exchange  of  equivalents,  in  order  to  its  justification  ;  but 
the  principle  which  it  assumes  is  not  substantiated.  The 
compensation  allowed  does  not  meet  the  claim  of  those 
who  are  deprived  of  possession  and  are  kept  from  their 
share  in  the  land,  and  instead  of  the  common  gift  obtain  a 
forced  contract.  That  which  is  the  postulate  of  the  whole 
proposition  is  also  immediately  evaded,  for  what  is  the  value 
of  the  original  land  as  part  of  the  common  gift  and  good, 
and  what  is  the  value  of  the  improvement  laid  out  upon  it 
by  labor,  and  what  is  the  actual  possessor  to  allow  for  that 
which  he  may  have  consumed  out  of  the  common  gift  and 
good,  in  the  depreciation  of  its  original  value,  as  wood  or 
minerals,  or  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil  by  crops  ?  Then  in 
the  providing  of  an  employment,  the  sphere  and  means  of 
labor  on  the  land,  the  claim  of  those  who  are  kept  from 
possession  of  the  land  is  not  satisfied,  for  this  which  gains 


THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION   OF  EIGHTS.  91 

them  subsistence  from  the  land  and  a  return  for  service,  is 
not  the  equivalent  for  their  deprivation  also  from  the  land 
itself.  The  proposition  furthermore  is  inconsistent,  since 
as  M.  Proudhon  in  availing  himself  of  its  premise  has  said, 
if  nature  be  the  common  gift  and  good  open  before  all,  it 
does  not  belong  to  the  actual  possessors  nor  to  their  fa- 
thers to  work  on  it  exclusively,  nor  to  hold  exclusively  its 
values.  It  is  furthermore  defective  in  its  assumption  of 
the  common  good  of  nature  as  alone  a  gift,  and  its  separa- 
tion thus  from  the  return  of  labor,  since  labor  has  the  gift 
of  nature  for  its  ground  or  its  reward.  "  The  advocates  of 
this  theory,"  says  Stahl,  "  look  upon  nature  as  only  a  treas- 
ury of  goods,  which  has  not  God  for  its  Lord  but  only 
men,  and  so  they  can  divide  them  up." l 

The  proposition  of  Hegel  has  a  higher  worth  than  any- 
preceding  it  in  recent  politics.  According  to  Hegel,2  the 
beginning  of  property  is  in  the  fact  of  occupancy ;  but 
he  says  occupancy  is  only  the  incident,  and  property  ex- 
ists in  the  occupancy  by  a  person,  and  the  ground  of  the 
existence  of  property  is  in  the  right  of  a  person  to  a  thing. 
The  possession  of  a  thing  is  in  the  will,  that  is,  in  a 
person  ;  and  the  possession  of  a  thing  is  mine  as  I  assert 
my  will  over  it,  and  thus  as  I  withdraw  the  assertion  of  my 
will  from  over  it,  I  may  alienate  the  thing  which  was  in 
possession.  The  first  comer  is  the  possessor,  not  because 
he  is  the  first,  but  as  he  asserts  a  will  over  the  thing,  and 
he  is  first  only  in  relation  to  some  second  or  third  person 
who  may  come  afterwards.  The  right  is  in  the  will, 
that  is,  in  the  person,  and  the  actual  possession  is  in  the 
assertion  of  the  will ;  and  in  property  there  is  only  the  ac- 
tualization of  the  right  of  a  person  to  a  thing.  This  prop- 
osition is  true  in  its  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  mate- 

1  See  Stahl,  Philosophic  des  Rechts,  vol.  ii.  sec.  1,  p.  370,  whose  criticism  of 
this  proposition  I  have  mainly  followed,  and  whose  whole  statement  of  property 
has  the  highest  value. 

2  Hegel's  Philosophic  des  Rechts,  pp.  78-94. 


92  THE  NATION. 

rial  world  exists  for  man  and  man  is  placed  over  it ;  it  is 
true  also  in  its  definition  of  occupancy  as  only  the  circum 
stance,  for  it  cannot  be  the  ground,  of  the  institution  of 
property,  nor  of  the  right  in  property ;  it  is  true  also  in 
representing  possession  as  in  the  will,  for  property  belongs 
to  me  only  as  I  assert  my  will  over  it,  and  I  may  alienate 
or  transfer  it  by  an  act  of  will.  But  this  proposition  can 
only  be  justified,  not  as  the  existence  of  property  is  left  to 
be  determined  simply  by  the  circumstance  of  occupancy, 
in  a  precedence  in  time,  but  as  property  is  regarded  as 
the  gift  of  God  to  man  in  the  material  world.  It  is  man's 
only  as  his  personal  being ;  that  is,  his  life  in  its  moral 
realization  is  from  God,  and  it  is  his  in  and  for  the  ful* 
fillment  of  his  vocation  in  a  moral  order  in  the  world,  and 
apart  from  this  there  is  nothing  which  is  his  own.  The 
right  to  property  and  the  possession  is  therefore  in  person- 
ality, and  the  existence  of  property  is  of  the  gift  of  God. 
It  exists  in  the  sphere  of  the  vocation  of  man,  and  it  is 
instituted  and  maintained  in  the  nation  as  the  nation  is 
formed  in  the  moral  order  of  God  in  the  world. 

The  common  theories  of  the  schools  in  which  it  had 
been  the  aim  to  establish  the  ground  of  the  right  to  prop- 
erty, were  subjected  by  M.  Proudhon,  in  the  approach  to 
his  famous  inference,  to  a  thorough  and  vigorous  criticism. 
The  right,  he  said,  is  not  derivative  from  the  fact  of  occu- 
pancy, for  the  arbitrary  seizure  of  a  thing  cannot  become 
the  ground  of  a  right  to  it;  the  momentary  possession  of 
a  thing  still  less  can  become  the  ground  of  a  continuous 
right ;  and  occupancy  can  at  the  most  claim  respect  only  in 
so  far  as  the  individual  actually  and  immediately  exercises 
it ;  and  then,  also,  possession  can  be  respected  only  in  so 
long  and  so  far  as  actual  occupancy  appears.  It  is  not  de- 
rivative from  labor,  for  the  right  and  the  freedom  to  labor 
upon  a  thing  already  presumes  possession  of  it,  and  the 
labor  may  create  a  higher  value  in  it,  but  not  the  thing 
itself;  the  value  may  also  be  diminished  by  labor  upon  it, 


THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION   OF  RIGHTS.  93 

as  the  detriment  that  follows  the  destruction  of  forests.  It 
is  not  derivative  from  positive  law,  that  is,  a  legal  arrange- 
ment and  cantonment  in  the  beginning  of  society,  for  posi- 
tive law  can  regulate  nothing  which  does  not  of  itself 
already  exist ;  the  reference  of  its  origin  to  a  formal  law 
would  leave  still,  moreover,  only  an  arbitrary  ground. 
Therefore,  said  M.  Proudhon,  since  all  the  theories  of 
your  schools  fail,  since  there  is  no  ground  in  all  that  you 
have  claimed  for  the  right  to  property,  property  is  not  a 
right  but  a  wrong ;  property  is  robbery.1 

The  argument  of  M.  Proudhon  is  conclusive  against  the 
theories  he  assailed,  theories  held  often  as  the  idle  or  the 
convenient  evasion  of  a  deeper  truth,  and  held  in  the  deg- 
radation of  the  nation,  as  the  consequent  of  the  schemes 
which  deny  its  moral  being,  and  assert  its  existence,  as 
only  the  support  of  private  interests  in  the  combination  of 
capital  and  toil.  The  error  of  M.  Proudhon  is  in  his  pre- 
mise. The  existence  of  property  is  presumed  to  be  a 
wrong,  because  no  title  assumed  to  the  acquisition  of  prop- 
erty is  proven  to  be  founded  in  justice.  But  as  Stahl  has 
said,  the  title  of  acquisition  is  not  the  basis  of  prop- 
erty, but  the  property  is  the  basis  for  the  title,  and  occu- 
pancy and  labor  and  law  are  indicative  of  possession,  on 
the  ground  that  apart  from  them  the  necessity  and  justice 
of  property  exists.  M.  Proudhon  has  proven  nothing 
against  the  right  in  the  existence  of  property,  nor  against 
the  right  to  property,  but  he  has  proven  the  defect  of  the 
weak  and  false  theories  in  which  a  foundation  for  the  insti- 
tution of  property  has  been  sought.  M.  Proudhon  has 
been  called  an  atheist,  but  those  by  whom  the  accusation 
has  been  made  may  have  to  consider  how  far  their  repre- 
sentation of  the  origin  and  institution  of  property,  which  he 
assailed  so  passionately  and  so  conclusively,  separates  them 
from  atheism.  They  who  hold  the  tenure  of  property  in 
these  theories  may  justify  themselves,  but  it  may  be  for 

1  Proudhon,  Systems  des  Contradictions  Economiques^  vol.  ii.  p.  234. 


94  THE   NATION. 

them  to  ask  what  they  may  have  in  these  theories  to  pro- 
tect them  and  their  rights  ;  or  what  the  future  of  society 
may  be  which  is  educated  in  them;  or  how  they  may 
meet  those  crises  which  try  the  defect  in  social  schemes, 
and  which  they  may  defer  in  their  dogmas  but  cannot  de- 
fer in  history,  the  inevitable  days  in  which  false  theories 
and  false  systems  are  burned  up  like  stubble.  It  is  in  the 
avoidance  of  the  divine  origin  and  subsistence  of  the  nation, 
and  in  the  indifference  to  its  existence  in  its  moral  being, 
and  in  the  assertion  of  individual  and  economic  schemes,  that 
these  theories  have  prevailed,  and  in  them  they  have  their 
consistent  assumption.  The  Hebrew  commandment  pre- 
sumed the  being  of  the  nation  in  which  it  was  declared,  as 
a  moral  order,  and  as  subsisting  in  the  name  of  a  righteous 
will,  from  whom  the  commandment  came,  and  in  that  con- 
ception the  tenure  of  property  was  denned. 

The  origin  of  the  existence  of  property  and  of  the  right,  is 
in  no  formal  law  or  precedence,  and  law  is  only  regulative 
and  descriptive  of  it.  It  is  in  no  external  circumstance, 
and  occupancy  is  only  the  incident  of  it,  and,  in  its  exclu- 
sive apprehension,  allows  to  it  no  moral  significance.  There 
is  in  neither  a  formal  law  nor  an  external  circumstance  the 
source  of  rights,  and  it  is  only  as  property  consists  with  the 
nature  and  vocation  of  man  that  occupancy  and  law  follow 
from  it,  but  its  origin  is  not  in  them. 

The  ground  of  the  right  in  the  existence  of  property, 
and  of  the  right  to  property,  is  in  the  vocation  from  God 
in  the  world,  of  the  individual  and  of  the  nation.  Prop- 
erty is  the  material  for  the  work  of  man  in  his  vocation  on 
the  earth,  and  in  that  alone  is  the  ground  of  its  right.  If 
property  becomes  in  itself  an  end,  then  personality  is  sub- 
jected to  \he  things  which  it  possesses.  If  it  be  held  apart 
from  the  vocation  of  man  and  the  moral  relations  and  obli- 
gations involved  in  that,  then  it  becomes  mere  possession, 
the  instrument  of  a  selfish  interest,  and  the  means  for  the 
degradation  of  personality. 


THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION   OF  EIGHTS.  95 

To  the  individual  and  to  the  nation  God  gives  his  pow- 
ers and  his  working  field,  and  these  are  the  talents  of  each, 
and  in  this  alone  does  property  consist.  It  is  thus,  as  it 
is  given  in  and  for  the  vocation  of  man  on  the  earth,  that 
its  use  affords  a  ground  for  the  manifestation  of  character, 
and  there  may  be  in  it  the  expression  of  individuality,  and 
elements  of  culture  and  freedom.  In  this  also  is  the  sign 
of  the  sacredness  of  the  relation  which  the  individual  and 
the  nation  bear  to  the  earth.  Thus,  also,  if  there  be  no 
recognition  of  a  vocation  which  the  individual  and  the  na- 
tion are  to  fulfill,  then  the  origin  of  property  is  only  in  the 
arbitrary  or  the  accidental ;  it  is  in  its  origin  arbitrary  — • 
the  seizure  by  force  and  choice  of  that  which  each  may 
lay  hold  of;  or  accidental — that  which  each  in  his  for- 
tune may  stumble  on  or  is  in  luck  to  obtain,  and  it  is  the 
sign  only  of  the  avarice  of  men  who  clutch  it  in  their 
grasp,  or  the  risk  of  men  who  find  it  by  the  way.1 

The  origin  of  the  existence  of  property  and  of  the 
right  to  property  is  not  in  the  physical  condition  of  man. 
There  is  no  more  ground  in  his  physical  being  for  prop- 
erty than  there  is  in  the  other  animals  for  property,  as  in 
it  man  has  no  more  rights  than  they.  Man  is  dependent 
upon  the  physical  world,  and  in  his  physical  being  is 
related  to  it,  through  the  sweep  of  all  its  changes,  and  it 
may  be  in  the  evolution  of  all  its  forms :  but  in  his  spiritual 
nature,  he  is  over  it ;  he  exists  in  a  higher  sphere  ;  his  cit- 
izenship is  in  another  world ;  and  in  that  ampler  realm  of  a 
realized  freedom  there  is  alone  the  ground  of  rights.  In 
the  physical  world  man  is  to  find  the  satisfaction  of  his 
physical  necessities,  and  therefore  he  has  power  in  it  and 
over  it.  But  property  is  not  therefore  simply  the  means 
for  the  satisfaction  of  physical  necessities,  nor  is  its  ground 
in  the  aimless  subjection  of  the  material  world  ;  in  this 
there  can  be  the  source  of  no  right. 

1  Dr.  Brownson's  definition  of  property  is  as  profound  as  it  is  beautiful,  — 
"Property  is  communion  with  God,  through  the  material  world." — Tlie  Ameri- 
can Republic,  p.  15. 


\ 


96  THE  NATION. 

Ill  the  physical  world  man  has  a  formative  power,  and 
there  is  in  his  physical  condition  the  hard  necessity  for  la- 
bor, but  labor  follows  from  the  existence  of  property  and 
the  right  in  it ;  not  the  reverse.  It  is  an  element  in 
property,  and  in  the  necessary  condition  of  life  it  appears 
as  the  wages  for  toil  and  the  return  for  service,  but  labor 
itself  passes  into  the  higher  conception  of  work  in  the 
vocation  of  man. 

The  recognition  of  property  on  this  postulate  is  alone 
consistent  with  the  correspondence  in  the  rights  and  duties 
of  property.  When  recent  economists,  as  Bastiat,  admit 
that  the  true  condition  of  property  and  the  relations  of 
capital  and  labor  can  be  fixed  by  no  adjustment  of  eco- 
nomic schemes,  but  by  the  recognition  of  a  moral  obligation 
in  the  use  of  property,  it  becomes  an  evidence  of  this  prop- 
osition as  to  the  ground  of  property.  It  is  not  simply  the 
purchase  by  the  individual,  which  is  to  be  held  in  exclusive 
use,  and  suffers  an  indifference  to  moral  relations  ;  it  has  a 
moral  aim,  and  thus  the  advance  in  civilization  will  not  be 
in  its  negation,  and  the  degradation  of  all  in  a  mere  com- 
munism ;  there  will  be  its  better  assertion,  and  in  the 
recognition  of  the  duties  of  property  as  correspondent  to 
its  rights  there  may  be  the  coming  of  the  true  communism, 
of  which  the  world  once  has  seen  the  type. 

The  relation  of  property  to  the  family  has  its  basis  in 
the  constitution  of  the  'family,  as  a  moral  order  in  the 
world.  The  fact  that  in  archaic  society  it  is  held  as  a 
common  possession  in  the  family,  is  consequent  on  the 
fact  that  the  family  is  the  archaic  form,  and  the  inception 
of  the  moral  order  and  relations  of  the  world  is  in  the  in- 
stitution of  the  family.  Thus  the  relation  of  property  to 
the  family  does  not  cease  in  the  progress  of  society,  but  is 
held  with  more  definite  limitations  and  provisions  as  soci- 
ety passes  into  more  complex  and  varied  relations. 

The  process  in  the  realization  of  a  moral  order,  in  the 
institution  of  property,  appears  also  in  the  realization  of 


THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION   OF    RIGHTS.  97 

the  nation.  The  people  possesses  in  the  land  the  external 
sphere  of  its  vocation  in  history.  The  right  to  the  land  is 
not  in  the  fact  of  occupancy,  but  in  the  vocation  of  the 
nation  as  a  moral  person.  The  nation  has  the  right  to 
property  in  its  own  vocation,  and  as  a  moral  order  it  is 
instituted  and  maintained,  in  the  nation,  in  and  with  the 
vocation  of  the  individual.  Thus  property  is  to  be  main- 
tained as  an  institute  of  the  nation,  and  secured  alike  to 
the  individual  and  the  family  and  the  nation.  The  right 
of  property,  as  it  is  existent  in  the  nation,  has  its  formal 
assertion  in  the  right  of  eminent  domain  or  expropriation. 
It  obtains,  not  because  the  right  of  one  man,  or  of  a  col- 
lection of  men,  is  precedent  to  the  right  of  another,  and 
there  is  no  ground  on  which  the  rights  of  several  should 
exclude  the  right  of  one,  but  because  the  right  of  the  na- 
tion is  necessarily  precedent  to  the  rights  of  the  individual. 
Yet  here  also  the  nation  in  its  moral  order  is  to  regard 
and  to  maintain  the  existence  of  property.  Therefore  in 
the  formal  exercise  of  expropriation,  an  adjustment  is  to 
be  made  by  compensation.  The  obvious  maxims  given 
by  Bluntschli  in  defining  this  are,  first,  that  the  nation 
maintain  the  freedom  and  the  security  of 'property  ;  and, 
second,  that  it  exercise  no  arbitrary  disposition  of  prop- 
erty. And  as  an  element  in  property  is  labor,  the  nation 
in  the  exercise  of  expropriation  is  to  render  compensation 
to  the  individual  for  the  return  of  his  labor  appropriated 
by  it.  It  is  the  fact  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  order  that 
makes  the  maintenance  of  the  rights  of  property  impera- 
tive, and  while  it  belongs  to  it  to  define  values  in  the  issue 
of  money,  it  is  to  make  this  issue  the  representative  of 
actual  values,  and  while  its  own  right  is  precedent  —  and 
may  be  exercised  in  its  peril,  as  in  war  —  in  the  possession 
of  all  property,  yet  in  its  normal  course,  if  it  fails  to  sus- 
tain the  validity  of  contracts  and  exchange,  in  correspond- 
ence with  their  actual  values  it  becomes  itself  destructive 
of  property,  and  as  the  obligation  of  the  nation  is  higher 


98  THE  NATION. 

as  its  right  is  higher,  every  act  of  national  dishonesty  is  the 
greater  wrong,  and  is  subversive  of  the  moral  order  of  the 
whole. 

The  right  to  the  recognition  of  these  civil  rights,  and 
to  their  maintenance  in  the  civil  order,  is  the  primary 
civil  right.  It  is  the  necessary  condition,  in  which  all 
other  civil  rights  are  established,  and  without  it  they  re- 
main a  fiction.  To  each  and  all  the  nation  is  to  leave 
open  the  avenue  to  these  rights,  and  is  to  allow  it  to  be 
closed  in  the  private  interest  of  none.  This  is  what  Burke 
has  called  the  right  to  justice.  It  is  the  right,  in  the  or- 
ganization of  justice,  of  every  man  to  a  fair  trial  for  him- 
self and  against  every  other  man.  The  justice  of  the 
state  is  to  be  for  each  and  all,  or  it  becomes  the  institution 
of  injustice  ;  its  tribunal  is  to  be  open  to  hear  the  cause  of 
all,  or  it  becomes  the  inquisition  of  wrong.  It  is  the  right 
of  all  to  equality  before  the  law. 

This  right  is  implied  in  the  necessary  conception  of  law 
as  universal.  It  is  indicated  in  the  most  ancient  symbols 
of  justice,  and  its  types  are  traced  in  the  most  archaic  of 
social  forms.  The  earliest  traditions  are  of  the  institution 
of  tribunals,  to  which  all  may  appeal,  and  in  whose  judg- 
ment all  may  abide.  The  signature  of  justice  most  widely 
found  is  the  scale  held  with  fair  and  even  balance.  It  is 
the  figure  of  one  who  is  blindfold  and  sees  not  those  who 
may  approach,  but  whose  ear  is  open  to  the  cry  of  all. 
The  rich  and  the  poor,  the  strong  and  the  weak,  may  all 
share  its  protection  and  must  abide  its  decision.  The  life 
of  the  humblest  is  as  sacred  as  that  of  the  greatest,  and 
the  possession  of  the  poorest  in  shelter  and  tools,  is  as  well 
regarded  as  the  estate  of  the  rich. 

It  is  this  principle  of  equality  before  the  law  that  ap- 
pears in  the  foundation  of  social  order.  In  the  myths  of 
Plato,  it  is  represented  in  the  inception  of  society.  "  Man 
was  furnished  with  all  he  needed,  for  his  individual 
life ;  but  he  had  not  yet  the  wisdom  by  which  society  is 


THE  NATION   THE  INSTITUTION   OF   RIGHTS.  99 

formed.  This  wisdom  was  kept  in  the  citadel  of  Zeus, 
and  into  that  awful  sanctuary  forethought  could  not  enter. 
As  time  went  on,  the  power  and  weakness  of  man  was 
seen.  He  instituted  ordinances  of  worship  ;  he  defined 
language ;  he  invented  clothing  and  procured  food  for  him- 
self. But  lie  lived  in  isolation  and  was  unfit  for  social 
union.  Then  if  men  were  scattered  they  were  in  danger 
of  perishing  from  wild  beasts ;  if  they  tried  to  combine, 
they  were  scattered  again  by  mutual  violence.  There- 
upon  Zeus,  fearing  for  the  safety  of  our  race,  sent  Hermes 
with  self-respect  and  justice,  that  their  presence  among 
men  might  establish  order,  and  knit  together  the  bonds  of 
friendship  in  society.  '  Must  I  distribute  them,'  said  Her- 
mes, '  as  the  various  arts  have  been  distributed  aforetime, 
only  to  certain  individuals,  or  must  I  dispense  them  to 
all  ?  '  '  To  all,'  said  Zeus,  c  and  let  all  partake  of  them. 
For  states  could  not  be  formed,  if  they,  like  the  arts,  were 
confined  to  a  few.  Nay,  more,  if  any  is  incapable  of  self- 
respect  and  justice  let  him  be  put  to  death,  such  is  my 
will,  as  a  plague  to  the  state.'  "  l 

The  wide  historical  influence  of  the  axiom  of  the  juris- 
consults of  the  Antonine  era,  "  omnes  homines,  natura 
aequales  sunt,"  has  been  illustrated  by  a  recent  historian  of 
Roman  law.  Its  auspicious  assertion  as  a  principle  and 
aim  in  the  destination  of  the  state,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
independence  of  the  republic,  will  always  have  an  histor- 
ical significance. 

The  recognition  of  an  equality  before  the  law  is  slow  to 
come,  and  the  attainment  of  an  impartial  justice  is  marked 
by  careful  and  painful  steps.  It  seems  so  fair  an  ideal,  as 
to  win  the  thoughts  of  men.  It  alone  reflects  that  holy 
faith  in  justice,  which  men  feel  in  their  hearts  has  some- 
where its  abode,  and  to  which  tl^e  right  does  not  appeal  in 
vain.  It  is  the  only  shield  of  human  weakness,  against  in- 
human wrong,  and  the  violence  and  fraud  and  oppression 
i  Thecetetus,  sec.  21. 


100  THE  NATION. 

of  wicked  men,  but  many  have  fallen  striving  for  it  who 
have  been  the  prophets  of  the  world  whose  cry  is  still "  how 
long  ?  "  It  is  the  policy  of  evil  to  devise  against  it,  and  it 
is  overborne  by  all  the  evil  elements  of  our  nature,  by  sel- 
fishness and  pride  and  lust. 


t 


Political  rights  are  those  rights  which  are  instituted  in 
the  normal  process  of  the  people  as  an  ethical  organism. 
They  are  those  rights  which  have  their  ground  in  the 
being  of  the  nation  in  its  moral  personality,  and  in  them 

;ie  freedom  of  the  people  in  its  organic  unity  is  realized. 
Political  rights  include  the  right  of  every  person  born 
in  the  nation,  to  be  and  to  remain  in  its  citizenship. \  The 
nation  cannot  arbitrarily  determine  who  shall  or  shall  not 
exist  in  it  as  members  of  it.  "  The  right  of  citizenship  as 
distinguished  from  alienage,"  says  Kent,  in  defining  the 
law  of  civilization,  "  is  a  national  right,  character,  or  con- 
dition." This  is  applied  to  "  all  persons  born  in  the  juris- 
diction and  allegiance  of  the  United  States."1  This  is 
irrespective  of  ancestry,  and  consists  with  a  national  not  a 
racial  principle.  It  is  involved  in  the  being  of  the  nation 
in  its  moral  relations,  and  therefore,  as  every  other  right,  is 
only  forfeited  by  crime,  which  is  in  its  nature  and  effect 
the  severance  of  relationships. 

^Political  rights  include  the  right  of  every  person  who  is 
a  member  of  the  nation,  to  participation  in  its  resultant 
advantage.7)  The  strength  and  power  to  which  it  has  at- 
tained are  to  be  the  aid  and  defense  of  every  member,  and 
the  domain  of  its  order  is  to  be  open  to  him.  Its  histori- 
cal memories  and  associations  are  no  more  truly  the  glory 
and  hope  of  all  its  members  than  are  its  results  the  pos- 
session of  all.  (It  has  a  universal  end,  and  to  restrict  its 
advantages  to  one  or  to  a  few,  to  an  individual  or  to  a  j 
class,  would  involve  the  subordination  of  the  whole  to  pri«  ] 
tfate  and  special  ends.  \ 

i  2  Kent's  Comm.  39. 


THE  NATION   THE  INSTITUTION   OF  RIGHTS.  101 


Political  rights  include  the  right  of  every  person  who  is 
a  member  of  the  nation  to  the  actual  determination  of  a 
person  in  its  destination.  The  personality  of  each  is  to  be 
respected  in  it,  and  to  act  in  it,  not  negatively  but  posi- 
tively, not  passively  to  be  allowed  as  if  the  nation  were 
only  some  power  over  it,  but  it  is  to  act  as  itself  a  deter- 
minate power  in  it.  Since  the  normal  and  moral  process  of 
the  nation  is  in  the  determination  of  personality,  every  in- 
dividual who,  being  a  member  of  it,  has  personality,  has  the 
right  to  its  determinate  assertion  in'  the  nation.  It  is  its 
defect  when,  by  an  arbitrary  act,  certain  persons  are  in- 
cluded and  determine  its  action  and  certain  other  persons 
are  excluded. 

Political  rights  include  also  the  recognition  and  insti- 
tution of  all  those  rights  which  are  involved  in  the  rela- 
tions of  life  as  a  moral  order.  These  are  to  be  guarded 
and  affirmed  by  the  nation,  which  is  invested  with  authority 
to  maintain  the  order  of  society.  Thus  the  family  in  its 
normal  and  moral  conception  is  to  be  maintained  by  it,  and 
the  violation  of  its  organic  law  is  to  be  punished. 

Rights  have  their  correspondence  in  duties ;  they  may 
be  arbitrarily  separated,  but  it  cannot  be  without  the  de- 
fect or  the  distortion  of  the  one  or  the  other.  Since  rights 
have  a  moral  content,  to  every  right  a  duty  corresponds, 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  a  right  corresponds  also  to  every 
duty,  since  there  are  immediate  duties  in  the  relations  of 
life,  as  for  instance,  the  duty  of  a  child  to  its  parents. 

Rights  and  duties  have  the  same  ground  in  personality. 
Rights  have  not  their  ground  in  duties,  and  do  not  pro- 
ceed as  if  only  derivative  from  them.  A  right  is  a  con- 
dition, in  which  there  may  be  the  fulfillment  of  a  duty  ;  but 
a  right  is  not  simply  the  means  for  the  fulfillment  of  a  duty, 
only  the  instrument  by  which  a  duty  is  performed,  and  hav- 
ing apart  from  that  no  significance.  Rights  no  less  than 
the  fulfillment  of  duties  have  their  immediate  content  in 


102  THE  NATION. 

personality ;  they  are  therefore  to  be  held  not  simply  as  sub- 
sequent to  duties,  and  as  if  only  incident  to  them.  Since 
rights  proceed  in  their  conception  from  a  righteous  will, 
and  subsist  in  that,  therefore  in  the  realization  of  rights 
there  is  the  fulfillment  of  duties.  The  rejection  of  the 
immediate  foundation  of  rights  and  duties  in  personality 
can  result  only  in  the  construction  of  a  formal  law  of  duty 
and  a  formal  system  of  rights. 

Mr.  Caird  has  said  that,  "  in  the  philosophy  of  Kant, 
the  demand  for  the  rights  of  man  first  manifested  its  true 
nature,  because  in  that  philosophy  the  claim  of  right  was 
based  on  the  idea  of  duty."  1  But  rights  are  based  in  per- 
sonality, and  in  that  alone  can  they  subsist,  and  from  that 
alone  is  their  content  derived.  Kant  asserted  that  the 
rights  of  man  exist  only  in  conformance  to  an  abstract 
moral  law,  and  only  for  an  end  defined  in  that  law,  but 
this  can  become  the  ground  only  of  a  formal  conception 
of  rights  and  a  formal  freedom.  It  would  merge  the  being 
of  the  state  into  a  formal  system  of  laws.  The  necessary 
inference  of  this  postulate  of  Kant,  is  the  derivation  of 
the  right  of  personality  from  a  law  of  duty,  and  thus  he 
assumed  it  to  be  resultant  from  the  law,  —  "  Let  not  thy- 
self be  used  as  a  means."  But  this  reference  of  the  right 
of  personality  to  an  abstract  and  formal  law,  and  its  defini- 
tion in  the  limitations  of  that  law,  is  not  a  sufficient  ground 
for  the  right  of  personality.  This  law,  for  instance,  which 
requires  me  to  guard  my  own  personality,  and  forbids  that 
I  should  allow  myself  to  be  used  as  a  means  to  an  end, 
is  obviously  too  narrow ;  it  does  not  comprehend  the 
right  of  personality,  for  this  involves  the  right  against 
other  persons,  that  they  also  shall  respect  my  personality, 
and  shall  not  use,  nor  dare  to  use  me  as  a  means  to  an 
end. 

1  Inaugural  Lecture  in  the  Common  Hall  of  Glasgow  College,  by  Edward 
Caird,  1866.  Kant's  Rechtskhre,  sec.  xliii.  See  Stahl,  Phil,  des  Recht*,  vol.  ii. 
sec.  1,  p.  96. 


THE  NATION   THE  INSTITUTION   OF  EIGHTS.  103 

The  rights  of  the  organic  people,  or  national  rights, 
have  an  integral  unity  as  they  are  instituted  in  the  real- 
ization of  the  nation  as  a  moral  person.  They  do  not 
compose  simply  a  formal  system.  They  are  not  a  mere 
accumulation  of  institutions,  to  be  held  by  the  people, 
as  a  miscellaneous  budget  of  receipts,  nor  do  they  exist 
only  as  proceeding  from  the  duties  of  the  people,  and  as 
the  resultant  of  certain  obligations.  The  rights  of  the 
people  subsist  in  the  consciousness  of  the  people  in  its 
unity,  and  this  is  the  condition  of  political  rights.  They 
bear  in  their  form  the  imprint  of  the  type  of  the  nation's 
individuality,  and  are  the  expression  of  its  spirit.  In  their 
institution  they  constitute  its  political  order.  There  is 
thus  in  its  political  course  the  expression  of  its  aim  and 
the  subjection  to  it  of  the  whole  external  order.  There  is 
indeed  apparent  in  the  institution  of  its  rights,  the  influ- 
ence of  the  physical  condition  of  the  people,  the  age,  the 
land,  the  climate,  the  races,  but  these  only  modify  while 
they  cannot  determine  its  process  ;  this  is  determined  only 
in  the  freedom  of  the  people,  and  is  the  manifestation  of  its 
spirit. 

The  rights  of  the  people  have  a  universal  as  an  indi- 
vidual element,  and  move  toward  one  end  in  every  nation, 
and  thus  there  is  a  correspondence  in  different  nations. 
But  the  one  element  does  not  preclude  the  other,  they  have 
an  integral  and  individual  character.  They  have  no  ex- 
otic forms,  and  cannot  at  once  be  transplanted  from  one 
people  to  another.  They  cannot  be  applied  as  abstract 
ideas  adopted  with  some  abstract  system.  Thus,  in  the 
development  of  rights,  while  they  may  not  always  have 
the  harmony  of  a  system,  yet  formed  in  the  life  of  the 
people  they  have  a  deeper  unity,  and,  wrought  and  forged 
in  the  great  events  of  its  history,  they  have  subtler  power 
and  robuster  proportions. 

There  is  a  certain  representation  of  rights  in  which 


104  THE  NATION. 

they  are  defined  as  original  and  acquired  rights.  But 
strictly  there  is  only  one  original  right,  the  right  of  per- 
sonality, and  to  this  all  others  may  be  referred.  It  is  the 
right  which  is  primitive  in  the  rights  of  man,  the  right 
of  a  man  to  be  himself.  The  term  acquired  rights,  when 
rights  are  held  as  the  acquisition  or  private  property  of 
certain  individuals  or  families,  denotes  a  condition  isolated 
from  the  normal  and  organic  being  of  the  nation,  and  de- 
riving its  content  from  traditional  force,  or  custom  or  acci- 
dent ;  it  describes  rather  the  privileges  or  prerogatives  of 
an  individual  or  a  class.  These  may  invade  the  whole 
sphere  of  natural  rights,  and  when  encroaching  upon  them, 
become  in  reality  the  ancient  wrongs  of  a  people.  Ac- 
quired rights  are  positive,  but  they  have  no  necessary  basis 
beyond,  and  exist  only  as  the  creation  of  law. 

There  is  a  definition  of  rights  as  absolute  and  relative. 
The  defect  in  the  phrase  absolute,  as  applied  to  rights,  has 
been  noticed ;  there  is,  moreover,  no  necessary  antithesis  to 
separate  relative  rights  and  the  rights  of  personality,  since 
all  rights  are  the  rights  of  persons  in  certain  relations. 
The  term  describes  mainly  the  rights  of  persons  in  cer- 
tain necessary  relations,  as  for  instance  the  rights  in  the 
family,  of  the  parent  and  child,  of  the  husband  and  wife, 
and  these  relations  are  founded  in  nature,  and  maintained 
by  the  nation,  as  belonging  to  a  moral  order. 

There  is  sometimes  added  to  the  same  category  the 
rights  of  corporations,  — "  artificial  persons  created  by 
law,  under  the  denomination  of  persons." l  These  rights 
are  more  exactly  defined  as  franchises  and  privileges. 
They  are  formed  by  vesting  a  certain  individual,  or  a 
number  of  individuals,  in  a  corporate  character  with  an 
artificial  personality,  and  attaching  thereto  certain  definite 
franchises  and  privileges,  which,  since  the  artificial  person- 
ality is  constructed,  are  described  as  rights.  They  are 

l  1  Kent's  Comm.  3. 


THE  NATION   THE  INSTITUTION   OF  RIGHTS.  105 

created  by  the  state  in  its  enactment,  and  have  their  ori- 
gin and  limitation  in  positive  law.  Their  accumulation  in 
great  monopolies,  presumed  to  be  chartered  for  the  public 
advantage,  is  to  be  rigorously  defined,  and  if  not  guarded 
may  be  an  injury  to  the  natural  rights  of  the  people. 
They  are  only  the  creation  of  law  and  exist  always  in 
subordination  to  the  law  of  the  public  weal,  but  the 
strength,  which  resides  in  their  assumption,  by  a  legal 
fiction,  of  personality,  is  a  significant  illustration  of  the 
real  ground  of  rights. 

There  is  a  definition,  the  most  prominent  in  the  history 
of  civil  rights,  in  which  they  are  described  as  the  rights  of 
persons  and  the  rights  of  things.  This  had  its  source  in 
Roman  law,  which  defined  rights  as  ad  personam  and  ad 
rem,  and  it  had  there  a  better  justification  than  in  later 
civilization,  since  in  Roman  law  the  definition  of  human- 
ity, as  Hegel  says,  was  impossible.1  In  Roman  law,  rights 
ad  personam  are  not  the  rights  of  a  person  as  such,  but 
the  rights  of  a  certain  person  or  of  a  person  in  a  certain 
status;  personality  as  distinct  from  slavery,  is  repre- 
sented as  only  a  status  or  a  condition.  The  phrase  in 
which  the  distinction  appears,  remains  as  a  reminiscence 
of  the  Roman  conception,  or  is  retained  as  a  technical 
term  or  as  a  nice  rhetorical  antithesis.  It  denotes,  says 
Christian,  "  by  the  former  the  rights  of  persons  in  public 
stations,  and  by  the  latter  the  rights  of  persons  in  private 
relations."  2  But  since  all  rights  are  the  rights  of  persons, 
and  things  can  be  only  the  objects  of  action,  the  merely 
verbal  antithesis  involves  confusion  and  may  become  the 
source  of  constant  error. 

The  description  of  rights  as  existent  in  some  formal 

l  Hegel,  Philosophie  des  Rechts,  p.  23. 

* 1  Bl.  Camm.  123. 

"  Now  rights  and  obligations  are  manifestly  the  attributes  of  persons,  not  of 


106  THE  NATION. 

system  which  the  nation  is  to  apply  is  unhistorical.  Rights 
are  represented  thus  as  complete  and  beyond  modification. 
They  are  the  framework  out  of  which  man  is  to  con- 
struct society,  the  house  which  is  so  built  that  one  state 
may  move  out  and  another  come  in.  They  are  the  dry 
anatomy  which  a  political  spirit  is  to  clothe  with  life.  This 
can  be  justified  only  as  the  origin  of  the  nation  is  defined 
in  a  formal  law  ;  it  is  inconsistent  with  its  organic  being. 

The  nation  is  the  realization  of  rights.  The  foundation 
of  rights  is  in  the  nature  of  man,  but  their  positive  deter- 
mination is  in  the  civil  and  political  organization. 

The  content  of  rights  is  in  personality ;  the  realization 
of  rights  is  in  the  being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  organ- 
ism. 

There  is  for  rights  no  positive  existence  apart  from  the 
nation.  The  imaginary  state  of  nature  in  which  rights 
are  represented  as  existing  in  their  completeness,  apart 
from  the  civil  and  political  being  of  society,  is  unreal,  it  is 
only  the  fiction  in  which  man  is  stripped  of  the  actual 
circumstance  and  relations  of  life,  in  order  that  he  may  be 
costumed  in  the  theories  and  speculations  of  later  schools. 
There  is  beyond  the  civil  and  political  organization  no 
right  but  might;  there  is  no  security,  and  rights  which  are 
primary,  as  of  life  and  liberty  and  property,  are  neither 
acknowledged  or  affirmed.  The  absence  of  the  rights  of 
man  is  characteristic  of  his  existence,  in  so  far  as  the 
germ  of  the  nation  is  undeveloped  and  its  form  undefined. 

There  is  in  the  nation  the  institution,  not  the  creation 
of  rights.  Since  their  foundation  is  in  the  nature  of  man, 
and  their  affirmation  is  in  the  nation,  and  since  no  man 
can  take  that  which  is  by  nature  his  right,  simply  as  a 

things,  and  to  divide  rights,  as  Blackstone,  into  the  rights  of  persons  and  the 
rights  of  things,  if  by  .the  latter  words  are  meant  rights  not  over  in  or  to,  but 
belonging  to  or  inherent  and  vested  in  things,  we  have  seen  evinces  either  inac- 
curacy of  thought,  or  is  at  best  misapplication  of  language."  —  Reddles'  In- 
quiries, etc.,  p.  171. 


THE  NATION  THE  INSTITUTION   OF  RIGHTS.  107 

gift,  they  are  formed  and  maintained  in  the  nation  only 
as  the  being  of  the  nation  has  a  divine  origin  and  is  itself 
a  divine  gift.  There  is,  therefore,  in  the  development  of 
the  nation  the  manifestation  of  the  rights  given  of  God  to 
man.  Thus,  in  the  representation  of  the  nation  as  only 
an  external  organization,  or  as  an  economic  association, 
there  can  be  no  just  conception  of  the  origin  or  subsistence 
of  rights.  Thus,  also,  they  cannot  be  regarded  as  hav- 
ing their  origin  in  law ;  in  law  there  is  their  assertion 
but  not  their  creation,  and  in  law  there  can  never  be  the 
perfect  measure  or  expression  of  them.  In  the  course  of 
the  nation  their  recognition  in  law,  in  any  moment,  is  nec- 
essarily incomplete,  and  is  never  a  finality,  but  is  always 
advancing  to  correspond  to  the  life  and  the  freedom  they 
represent. 

Since  the  nation  has  its  being  in  the  realization  of  rights, 
the  highest  obligation  of  the  nation  is  that  rights  be  real. 
In  the  institution  of  rights  there  is  the  manifestation  of 
the  nature  of  man  as  it  is  made  in  the  divine  image.  As 
the  origin  of  the  rights  of  man  is  in  his  creation  in  the 
divine  image,  so  also  is  their  realization  in  the  nation  the 
fulfillment  of  the  divine  will.  As  the  realization  of  rights 
'is  in  the  vocation  and  the  destination  of  the  people,  so 
also  is  the  righteousness  in  which  they  are  wrought  the 
condition  of  the  being  of  the  people.  The  realization  of 
the  rights  of  humanity  in  the  nation  is  the  fulfillment  of 
righteousness.  It  is  in  the  being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral 
person  that  there  is  the  realization  of  rights,  and  in  this  is 
the  affirmation  of  righteousness  on  the  earth,  and  therein 
also  the  nation,  in  its  personality,  can  subsist  only  in  the 
righteous  name,  and  can  proceed  only  in  the  righteous 
will  of  God. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

THE    NATION    THE    REALIZATION    OF   FREEDOM. 

THE  necessary  being  of  the  nation  is  in  the  realization 
of  freedom ;  that  is,  its  end  is  to  make  freedom  real,  and 
its  development  is  only  as  it  does  make  freedom  real. 

The  freedom  of  the  people  subsists  in  the  nation  as  a 
moral  person. 

Freedom  is  the  manifestation  of  personality.  Man  has  in 
his  nature  impulses  and  the  power  of  following  them,  and 
desires  and  the  power  of  gratifying  them ;  but  his  being  is 
not  in  these,  and  deeper  than  these  and  beyond  these,  there 
is  a  consciousness  of  an  I  —  a  person.  In  the  assertion  and 
the  realization  of  this,  and  in  the  exclusion  of  all  that  is 
alien  from  this,  alone  is  freedom.  It  is  the  realization  in 
man,  through  his  own  self-determination,  of  his  true  be- 
ing. The  law  of  freedom  is  the  law  which  is  laid  in  the 
being  of  personality.  The  act  of  freedom  is  a  self-deter- 
minate act,  the  determination  of  personality.1 

1  There  is  a  common  phrase  in  ethics,  which  asserts  the  existence  of  law 
precedent  to  life  —  a  law  precedent  to  the  divine  being,  or  as  the  phrase  is,  in 
one  shape,  "the  throne  of  justice  is  above  the  throne  of  God;  we  may  appeal 
from  the  throne  of  God  to  the  throne  of  justice."  If  there  be  the  assertion  of  a 
law  as  existent  "  in  the  beginning,"  those  who  postulate  a  law  having  a  moral 
content  as  the  just,  and  those  who  postulate  a  law  which  exists  only  as  a  formula 
of  thought, — the  necessary  limitation  of  conception  —  may  oppose  each  other, 
but  the  bystander  can  scarcely  question  the  result ;  the  latter  has  a  consistence 
which  the  former  cannot  claim,  and  the  pure  dialectic  has  the  start  of  the  ethic. 

But  the  law  which  has  for  its  substance  the  good  or  the  right,  is  in  the  di- 
vine person,  the  being  of  God;  it  is  the  will  of  God.  The  assumption  of  a 
precedent  law  is  not  necessary  to  the  assertion  of  the  immutability  of  the  good, 
as  it  is  apparent  in  moral  distinctions,  for  this  immutability  is  in  the  immutable 
being,  —  the  personal  being  of  God;  and  then  it  is  manifest  in  the  moral  order 
of  the  world,  as  the  moral  order  is  the  realization  of  the  will  of  God.  The  good 


THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION  OF  FREEDOM.    109 

The  assertion  of  personality  is  in  the  will.    The  will  de- 
rives from  personality  its  content.     The   self-determined 
rill  alone  is  free.     The  will  defined  in  an   abstract  and 
ml  conception,  and  divested  of  personality,  and  its  sub- 
sistence in  it,  allows  no  freedom,  and  when  thus  divested 
of  its  content  it  is  without  freedom  also. 

The  action  which  is  arbitrary  is  not  free.  It  is  the  mere 
formal  act  of  the  will ;  it  proceeds  only  from  the  will,  not 
from  the  conscious  determination  of  personality,  —  that  is, 
the  whole,  the  real  person,  —  and  having  no  other  source, 
it  is  only  willfulness.  This  action,  separated  thus  from  its 
subsistence  in  personality,  is  mere  force,  and  instead  of 
implying  force  of  character,  it  is  force  without  character. 
It  is  a  barren  sceptre.  It  has  no  more  dignity  than  the 
operation  of  a  physical  power  in  nature.  The  will  in  this 
conception  may  be  as  strong  and  as  unbending  as  iron,  but 
its  quality  is  no  better  than  iron. 

is  maintained  in  the  realization  of  a  moral  order  by  the  divine  will,  and  this  in 
the  relations  of  a  moral  order  is  the  just. 

"  The  good  is  as  little  a  law  for  the  divine  will  (that  is,  God  wills  it  because 
it  is  already  in  itself  good)  as  it  is  a  creation  of  the  divine  will  (that  is,  that  it 
first  becomes  the  good,  because  and  after  that  God  has  willed  it),  but  it  is  even 
in  itself  the  original  will  of  God,  from  eternity  to  eternity.  The  good,  as  the 
substance  of  the  divine  will,  is  something  specific,  distinct  from  the  divine  rea- 
son and  the  divine  omnipotence;  not  less  original  than  these:  it  springs  orig- 
inally purely  out  of  the  will,  but  it  springs  not  out  of  the  abstract  conception, 
(abstraktum)  of  the  will  (Kant's  abstract  conception  of  the  principle,  be  a  law 
unto  thyself;  or  Fichte's  abstract  conception  of  pure  self-activity);  nor  from  the 
formal  conception  (formalism us)  of  the  operations  of  the  will  (Hegel's  develop- 
ment of  the  moral  out  of  the  (momente)  incident  of  the  operations  of  the  will), 
but  it  springs  out  of  the  eternal  positive  (inhalte)  content  of  the  will. 

"  The  good  is,  to  speak  in  a  general  way,  nothing  else  than  the  substance  of  a 
person.  Man  can  therefore  endeavor  to  derive  the  conceptions  which  we  recog- 
nize in  the  attributes  of  God,  and  the  virtues  of  man  from  the  original  concep- 
tion of  personality.  In  the  substance  of  personality  there  lies  the  spirituality 
which  contends  against  losing  itself  in  external  objects  and  in^ensual  impulses, 
and  of  this  alone  and  of  nothing  else,  has  the  ethic  of  Kant  and  Fichte  given  a 
scientific  representation ;  in  the  substance  of  personality  there  lies  further  the 
unchangeableness  of  the  will,  that  in  relation  to  the  moral  order  of  the  world  is 
the  just;  in  the  substance  of  personality  is  the  love  that  goes  forth  toward  those 
who  are  persons;  in  the  substance  of  personality  there  is  the  oneness  of  all  these 
energies  and  qualities  in  the  innermost  centre  —  the  person ;  and  therewith  its 
impenetrability  by  all  that  is  external  or  strange  or  alien  to  it  —  its  holiness  " 
—  Stahl's  Philosophic  des  Rechts,  vol.  ii.  sec.  1,  pp.  85,  86. 


110  THE  NATION. 

The  action  which  springs  immediately  from  impulse  or 
appetite  is  not  free.  The  pursuance  of  a  blind  instinct,  or 
the  subjection  to  a  strong  passion,  is  the  negation  of  free- 
dom. Thus  the  animal  is  unfree.  It  is  determined  and 
limited  by  its  animal  nature.  The  desires  and  the  emo- 
tions, the  impulse  and  the  passion  of  men,  as  separate  from 
personality,  are  therefore  to  be  apprehended  as  external 
to  the  will,  and  the  immediate  subjection  to  them  is  igno- 
ble, as  the  degradation  of  personality,  and  unworthy,  as 
the  negation  of  the  true  and  real  self  in  man  ;  there  is  in 
it  the  loss  of  freedom.  Thus  Shakespeare  says :  — 

"I'll  never 

Be  such  a  gosling  to  obey  instinct,  but  stand, 
As  if  a  man  were  author  of  himself 
And  knew  no  other  kin." 

The  action  which  is  merely  unlimited  and  unrestrained 
is  not  free  ;  the  power  to  do  whatever  one  lists  or  pleases 
is  not  freedom.  The  most  false  representation  of  freedom 
is  this  apprehension  of  it  in  the  absence  of  restraint.  It 
is  then  identified  with  mere  caprice.  The  freedom  which 
in  this  assumption  is  called  natural  freedom  is  unreal.  It 
is  illustrated  by  the  old  words  denoting  the  widest  and  the 
most  unrestrained  play  of  desire,  "  a  boy's  will  is  the 
wind's  will."  But  in  that  unceasing  motion  and  that 
sweep  of  limitless  fields  there  is  no  freedom.  It  is  not 
until  the  boy  has  passed  on  to  the  life  of  a  personality, 
realized  in  its  conscious  self-determination,  that  he  is  truly 
free.  Yet  it  was  only  this  false  conception  of  freedom 
which  appeared  in  the  later  phases  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution. Freedom  was  sought  in  the  removal  of  all  that 
was  assumed  as  a  limitation.  It  was  to  be  attained  in 
the  erasure  of  the  whole  organization  of  society,  and  of 
all  the  institutions  and  associations  of  the  past.  The 
path  of  the  revolution,  in  its  principle,  was  not  far  from 
that  of  the  cloister,  and  the  ideal  still  was  that  which  had 
been  sought  in  the  via  negativa  of  the  mystic.  It  oblit- 


THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION  OF  FREEDOM.    Ill 

erated  all  that  appeared  beyond  its  immediate  intent. 
The  existing  order  was  to  be  determined  in  the  momen- 
tary action  of  the  individual.  It  was  not  a  freedom  which 
presumed  the  existence  of  the  nation  in  its  organic  and 
moral  being,  a  freedom  which  had  a  moral  content,  but  it 
was  assumed  to  consist  in  the  absence  of  all  limitation  and 
restraint.  Then  when  all  the  institutions  of  the  past  were 
swept  away,  and  no  apparent  barrier  was  before  men  to 
check  their  advance,  and  there  was  nothing  in  the  wide 
blank  of  the  horizon  to  debar  them,  there  was  a  painful 
discovery  that  they  were  not  yet  free.  It  was  the  rejec- 
tion of  the  moral  relations  which  subsist  in  the  nation,  and 
the  striving  after  freedom  in  mere  vacancy,  that  opened 
the  way  to  any  influence  from  without  that  might  take 
possession  of  the  empty  domain.  In  the  denial  of  all  or- 
ganic and  moral  relations  there  arose  everywhere  the  dis- 
trust and  crimination  of  men,  and  there  followed  what 
was  called  the  reign  of  terror,  when  those  who  never 
were  bidden,  came  to  the  room  all  swept  and  garnished, 
and  men  became  the  slaves  of  fear  and  of  dread,  and  the 
way  was  open  to  the  entrance  of  an  imperial  power. 

The  action  which  is  simply  momentary  is  not  free.  The 
will  in  its  freedom  has  elements  of  continuity  and  identity, 
which  subsist  in  personality  and  are  reflected  in  character. 
It  is  not  merely  the  capacity  to  vault  hither  and  thither, 
and  to  pass  and  repass  from  the  one  side  to  the  other. 
The  power  of  choice  certainly  is  involved  in  freedom,  and 
therefore  it  is  to  be  recognized  as  existent  in  it,  and  it  is 
not  to  be  obstructed  nor  confined  by  that  which  allows  no 
room  for  individuality  to  act,  and  no  sphere  in  which  it 
may  have  its  sweep  ;  but  the  choice  in  which  freedom  is 
realized  is  the  choice  which  is  in  accordance  with  personal- 
ity,—  it  is  the  realization  of  personality.  The  active 
choice  between  good  and  evil*  in  man  is  brought  forward 
in  the  contradiction  of  his  nature,  and  in  the  issue  of  the 
conflict  of  life,  and  it  appears  in  his  being  influenced  by  a 


112 


THE  NATION. 


power  against  himself  and  by  a  presence  alien  to  his  true 
and  real  self ;  and  in  this  there  is  manifest,  not  the  freedom 
of  man,  but  the  defect  of  freedom.  The  error  in  the  pop- 
ular apprehension  of  freedom  in  the  schools  of  theology, 
and  as  it  goes  out  from  them  in  politics,  is  in  representing 
it  as  consisting  only  in  a  power  of  choice,  only  an  empty 
formal  possibility  in  the  life  of  man,  but  having  no  de- 
terminate moral  content.  The  freedom  of  man  is  not 
simply  in  this  momentary  choice,  and  the  realization  of 
freedom  is  not  in  the  broader  road  opened  before  it  and 
the  wider  scope  of  possibility  in  its  action.  It  is  not  found 
in  the  larger  alternative  between  right  and  wrong,  or  the 
longer  balance  with  the  more  even  play  between  them. 
It  is  not  found  in  the  perfect  suspense  between  the  oppo- 
site forces,  and  it  is  not  won  by  the  people  that  stand  on 
neutral  ground.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  higher  freedom 
of  man  there  is  the  less  choice  between  the  good  and 
the  evil,  and  there  is  the  less  possibility  of  a  decision  un- 
worthy of  one's  real  and  true  self,  that  is  an  ignoble  de- 
cision. 

When  the  will  is  represented  as  only  in  identity  with 
the  power  of  choice,  which  when  thus  emptied  of  all  moral 
content  is  the  merely  willful,  that  is,  the  arbitrary,  then 
the  assertion  of  this  power  is  not  freedom,  and  the  mainte- 
nance of  this  power  is  not  among  the  rights  of  men.  The 
nation  is  to  realize  the  freedom  of  man,  and  to  guard  it  in 
the  institution  of  rights,  but  it  is  not  in  any  conception  to 
establish  the  wider  province,  and  to  open  the  more  unlim- 
ited scope  for  this  power  to  act,  and  to  guard  the  exercise 
of  it,  and  to  remove  all  restrictions  from  its  way,  and  to 
keep  it  from  all  hindrance  and  molestation,  in  the  indef- 
inite sweep  of  its  arbitrations.  The  freedom  of  the  citizen 
is  not  defined  in  the  power  to  turn  a  traitor,  nor  is  all  re- 
straint upon  the  power  of  turning  to  be  forbidden.  That 
people  would  not  be  the  more  free,  in  which  the  larger 
choice  was  left  open  to  its  soldiers  to  desert,  and  which 


THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION  OF  FREEDOM.    113 

made  such  action  a  principle  of  rights,  as  it  must  become 
if  it  be  the  real  freedom  of  man  ;  but  the  people  is  the 
more  free  when  there  is  in  the  spirit  of  its  soldiers  no 
possibility  of  desertion,  and  the  soldier  is  the  more  free  to 
whom  even  the  suggestion  of  such  action  does  not  come, 
who  is  beyond  its  suspicion,  and  who  knows  only  and  de- 
termines only  to  meet  and  fight  the  enemy.  The  soldier 
who  even  deliberates,  or  allows  the  choice  to  pass  before 
him,  is  the  less  free  — the  more  exposed  to  subjection  to 
impulse  and  fear.  This  assertion  of  the  mere  power  of 
choice  is  not  freedom,  and  its  maintenance  is  not  among 
the  rights  of  men,  and  its  extension  does  not  constitute  the 
progress  of  the  people.  In  the  choice  and  the  assertion 
of  the  right,  man  acts  in  accordance  with  his  real  and  in-, 
nermost  being,  his  own  true  self,  and  with  the  exclusion 
of  all  that  is  alien  as  external  to  that  being,  but  in  the 
opposite,  man  chooses  that  which  subverts  personality  and 
subjects  him  to  evil,  that  which  does  not  belong  to  his 
being,  which  comes  out  in  the  contradiction  of  his  na- 
ture ;  but  in  freedom  and  the  realization  of  freedom  there  , 
is  no  contradiction,  —  there  is  in  it  alone  the  act  and  the 
unfolding  of  the  true  being  of  man. 

Freedom  is  not  attained  in  the  negation,  in  which  man 
without  personality,  as  if  all  before  was  a  blank,  moment- 
arily determines  whether  to  be  this  or  that,  whether  to  do 
or  not  to  do.  In  the  determination  which  is  in  the  right, 
there  is  alone  in  the  individual  and  the  nation  the  realiza- 
tion of  freedom  and  the  attainment  of  the  being  and  end 
of  each. 

The  nation  is  the  realization  of  the  freedom  of  the  people. 
The  freedom  of  the  people  subsists  in  the  being  of  the 
nation  as  a  moral  person. 

If  the  nation  be  regarded  as  only  a  formal  organization, 
an  exposition  of  a  barren  system  of  rights  and  a  miscel- 
lany of  institutions,  then  only  a  formal  freedom  can  be 


114  THE  NATION. 

predicated  of  it  as  also  the  postulate  of  a  formal  freedom 
has  its  sequence  in  an  empty  and  formal  conception  of 
the  nation.  But  the  real  freedom  of  the  nation  in  which 
it  works  out  its  end  as  a  power  in  history,  the  freedom  in 
the  attainment  of  the  vocation  of  the  people,  in  the  mani- 
festation of  its  own  character,  in  the  strength  and  endur- 
ance of  its  own  will  in  the  divine  will,  in  whose  purpose 
is  the  development  of  history  in  the  moral  order  of  the 
world,  —  this  freedom  can  have  no  ground  in  a  merely 
formal  conception. 

The  defect  -in  the  popular  definitions  of  the  schools,  of 
the  freedom  of  the  nation  or  political  freedom,  is  conse- 
quent on  their  proceeding  from  this  formal  conception,  and 
while  only  a  formal  conception  has  been  assumed,  and  a 
formal  definition  has  been  allowed,  it  is  not  singular  that 
the  latter  has  been,  as  Mr.  Hurd  calls  it,  the  problem  of 
publicists.  Thus  the  subject  which  is  central  in  politics 
and  formative  of  its  whole  course,  has  obtained  in  this 
premise  no  clear  definition.  Dr.  Lieber,  in  a  treatise  con- 
cerned exclusively  with  national  and  political  freedom, 
represents  it  as  "  that  liberty  which  results  from  the  appli- 
cation of  the  general  idea  .of  freedom  to  the  civil  state  of 
man."  In  this  reference  to  "  the  general  idea  of  free- 
dom," the  subject  is  left  undefined,  and  one  is  sent  in  quest 
of  the  "general  idea."  And  the  freedom  of  the  people  in 
its  organic  and  moral  being,  that  is,  national  freedom,  is 
avoided  in  these  abstractions.  It  does  not  exist  thus  com- 
plete in  an  abstract  form,  which  a  people  is  then  to  adopt 

i  Lieber' s  Civil  Liberty,  etc.,  vol.  i.   p.  34. 

Dr.  Lieber,  in  attaching  so  great  weight  to  certain  institutions  of  freedom,  al- 
lows no  corresponding  weight  to  the  fact  that  these  institutions  have  their  only 
ground  in  the  organic  unity  of  the  people  in  the  nation.  This  leads  to  the  ap- 
plication of  certain  institutions  of  a  certain  type  to  all  nations,  and  thus  all  are 
to  be  made  to  conform  to  an  Anglican  type.  But  whil§  recognizing  the  worth  of 
these  institutions,  in  themselves,  to  civilization,  the  condition  of  freedom  is 
the  national  spirit  of  the  people,  which  will  mould  institutions  in  its  own 
strong  individuality.  While  the  United  States  has  in  its  history  a  lineal  re- 
lation to  some  of  these  institutions,  and  they  are  an  inheritance  of  inestima- 
ble value,  yet  work  is  to  be  done  in  new  conditions,  and  in  a  life  which  is  neither 
Anglican  nor  Galilean. 


THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION  OF  FREEDOM.    115 

and  apply  by  some  induction,  and  when  thus  apprehended 
it  can  result  only  in  the  construction  of  a  formal  system 
or  a  collocation  of  institutions.  It  would  be  as  consistent 
to  represent  the  freedom  of  the  individual  person,  as  the 
assumption  and  application  of  the  "  general  idea." 

The  freedom  of  the  people,  or  political  freedom,  subsists 
in  the  nation  in  its  organic  and  moral  unity.  It  is  the 
self-determination  of  the  people,  in  the  nation,  as  a  moral 
person.  It  is  formed  in  the  conscious  life,  and  its  process 
is  in  the  conscious  vocation  of  the  organic  people.1 

Freedom  has,  apart  from  the  nation,  no  positive  exist- 
ence. Thus  among  the  vast  populations  of  Asia,  there  is 
no  political  freedom,  but  only  the  natural  freedom  of  man, 
and  the  term  freedom. can  be  applied  to  those  peoples  only 
negatively  as  denoting  the  absence  of  a  positive  system  of 
islavery.  Thus,  also,  in  the  loss  or  the  destruction  of  the 
national  unity,  that  is,  the  organic  and  moral  being  of  the 

1  Milton's  whole  argument  rests  on  the  identity  of  political  and  moral  freedom, 
tand  the  utter  rejection  of  any  conception  which  does  not  presume  this.  He  says 
of  the  formal  representation,  — "  The  way  to  freedom  is  without  intricacies, 
without  the  introducement  of  new  or  absolute  forms  or  terms,  or  exotic  models, 
ideas  that  would  effect  nothing."  —  Milton's  Works,  ii.  127.  It  is  "  a  real  and 
'Substantial  freedom,  which  is  rather  to  be  sought  from  within  than  from  without, 
and  whose  existence  depends  not  so  much  on  the  terror  of  the  sword  as  on  so- 
tbriety  of  conduct  and  integrity  of  life."  —  Works,  i.  208.  "  Unless  that  liberty 
'which  is  of  such  a  kind  as  arms  can  neither  procure  nor  take  away,  which  alone 
Is  the  fruit  of  piety,  of  justice,  of  temperance,  and  unadulterated  virtue,  shall 
> have  taken  deep  root  in  your  minds  and  hearts,  there  will  not  be  long  wanting 
one  who  will  snatch  from  you  by  treachery  what  you  have  acquired  by  arms  ; 
i  unless  by  the  means  of  piety,  not  frothy  and  loquacious,  but  operative,  un- 
i  adulterated  and  sincere,  you  clear  the  horizon  of  the  mind  from  those  mists  of 
superstition  which  arise  from  the  ignorance  of  true  religion,  you  will  always 
have  those,  who  will  bend  your  necks  to  the  yoke,  as  if  you  were  brutes,  who 
notwithstanding  all  your  triumphs,  will  put  you  up  to  the  highest  bidder,  as  if 
you  were  mere  booty  made  in  war  ;  and  will  find  an  exuberant  source  of  wealth 
•  in  your  ignorance  and  superstition.  You,  therefore,  who  wish  to  be  free,  either 
instantly  be  wise,  or  as  soon  as  possible  cease  to  be  fools;  if  you  think  slavery 
an  intolerable  evil,  learn  obedience  to  reason,  and  the  government  of  yourselves; 
and  finally  bid  adieu  to  your  dissensions,  your  jealousies,  your  superstitions, 
your  outrages,  your  lusts.  Unless  you  will  spare  no  pains  to  effect  this,  you 
must  be  judged  unfit  both  by  God  and  mankind  to  be  intrusted  with  the  pos- 
session of  liberty  and  the  administration  of  government,  but  will  rather,  like  a 
nation  in  a  state  of  pupilage,  want  some  active  and  courageous  guardian  to  un- 
:  dertake  the  management  of  your  affairs."  —  Works,  ii.  295. 


116  THE  NATION. 

people,  its  freedom  perishes  although  its  external  condition 
and  its  sphere  of  external  circumstance,  for  the  individual, 
may  not  at  once  be  materially  changed.  The  form  and 
external  institutions  of  society  may  remain  as  before  in  so 
far  as  individual  action  and  individual  pursuits  are  con- 
cerned, but  the  freedom  of  the  people  expires  with  the 
national  being.  It  was  not  in  this  form  nor  in  these  insti- 
tutions, and  it  cannot  be  perpetuated  in  them  alone.  The 
external  structure  of  society  in  which  the  individual  moved 
was  not  immediately  subverted  nor  destroyed  in  the  disso- 
lution of  the  national  life  of  Greece  and  Rome,  but  their 
freedom,  which  was  of  their  spirit,  immediately  perished. 

The  freedom  of  the  people,  or  political  freedom,  is  formed 
in  the  self-determination  of  the  people.  This  precludes  all 
external  constraint,  since  an  action  which  is  constrained 
by  a  power  or  influence  external  to  the  will,  is  not  free. 
This  precludes  also  the  conduct  of  the  people  itself,  from 
mere  impulse  or  passion,  for  since  these  are  external  to 
the  will,  in  so  far  as  it  is  controlled  by  them,  there  is  no 
freedom.  The  course  which  is  the  result  of  mere  whim 
or  willfulness,  the  caprice  of  men  in  its  desultory  play, 
is  not  of  the  freedom  of  the  people ;  in  it  personality  is 
overborne,  and  the  very  unity  which  is  the  condition  of 
the  freedom  of  the  people  is  lost,  and  there  appears  the 
agitation  of  the  popular  tumult,  but  not  the  conscious 
order  of  the  state.1 

The  freedom  of  the  people,  or  political  freedom,  involres 
the  assertion  of  law.  It  subsists  in  the  nation  in  its  nor- 
mal being.  There  is  in  it,  therefore,  the  assertion  and  the 
manifestation  of  law,  but  it  has  not  therefore  a  formal 

1  Bluntschli  says,  "  Natural  freedom  is  the  power  to  do  whatever  one  likes. 
Moral  freedom  is  the  manifestation  of  the  will,  and  the  power  to  do  what  is  be- 
coming to  one's  own  nature  and  in  accordance  with  the  divine  economy  in  the 
world.  Freedom  in  its  political  conception  presumes  the  organization  of  rights, 
of  which  it  is  a  part.  It  is  the  power  and  warranty  protected  and  secured  by 
the  law  to  exercise  a  self-determined  end."  —  Allgemeinen  Slatsrechts,  rol. 
ii.  p.  487. 


THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION  OF  FREEDOM.    117 


ground  which  would  follow  if  the  law  was  merely  external 
and  definitive  only  of  a  formal  order.  The  law  which  is 
asserted  in  it,  as  the  norm  of  its  action,  is  the  law  in  the 
foundation  of  its  being  and  is  realized  in  its  being,  —  in  its 
self-determination,  as  a  moral  person.  There  is  thus  in  law 
and  freedom  an  inner  unity.  In  the  limitations  defined  in 
law,  there  is,  therefore,  no  bondage,  but  they  become  the 
evidence  of  the  emancipation  of  man.  This  emancipation 
is  not  indeed  in  the  institution  of  mere  external  limitations, 
which  are  devoid  of  all  content  and  may  be  only  obstruc- 
tions, nor  in  the  mere  limitations  of  formal  laws,  but  in  a 
life  which  is  formed  in  moral  relations,  and  the  laws  which 
are  asserted  are  those  which  define  and  regulate  those  re- 
lations. Freedom,  in  the  assertion  of  law,  assumes  re- 
straint and  accepts  obligations  in  the  relations  of  an  or- 
ganic and  moral  being,  and  in  these  there  is  no  limitation 
in  the  sense  of  hindrance,  or  as  the  mere  impediment  to 
action.  There  is  in  them  no  barrier,  but  freedom  is 
wrought  through  them.  It  is  a  divinity  that  doth  hedge 
us  in.  The  law  in  the  being  of  personality,  instead  of 
the  terminus  of  freedom,  is  its  postulate. 

The  freedom  of  the  people,  or  political  freedom,  is  the 
realization  of  the  self-determination  of  the  people  in  the 
nation  as  an  ethical  organism.  There  is  in  it  the  expres- 
sion of  the  self-determination  that  is  the  freedom  of  a  per- 
son, in  an  order  which  is  formed  in  moral  relations. 
There  is  in  it  the  assertion  of  the  individual  person.  The 
.  order  in  which  he  is  to  act  and  to  which  he  is  to  be  sub- 
ject, is  to  correspond  to  his  own  inner  being,  —  to  accord 
with  his  own  real  and  true  self.  The  sphere  in  which  he 
is  to  work  must  consist  with  his  own  aim  and  endeavor, 
It  is  thus  that  every  polity,  and  all  laws  which  are  im- 
moral are  destructive  of  freedom,  as  they  are  subversive  of 
the  true  being  of  men,  and  are  repressive,  and  hold  the 
elements  of  tyranny.  But  in  the  increase  of  the  freedom 
of  the  nation,  its  political  order  becomes  always  the  more 


118  THE  NATION. 

perfect  expression  of  the  moral  being  and  longing  of  the 
individual  person,  and  therefore  of  his  own  true  and  in- 
ner self.  Then  as  the  self-determination  of  the  people  is 
manifested  in  the  nation,  the  individual  person  in  his 
action  attains  in  it  his  determination,  and  in  his  obedi- 
ence to  it  he  is  obeying  his  own  true  and  inner  self. 
There  is  in  it  the  correspondence  to  his  own  being,  and 
the  embodiment  of  his  own  aim.  That  this  attainment  is 
at  any  moment  imperfect,  is  because  the  individual  and 
the  nation  have  a  life  which  for  each  is  a  development ; 
and  then  also  the  life  of  each  is  subject  to  the  conditions 
of  a  moral  conflict.  But  every  polity  which  avoids  this 
end  and  neglects  to  regard  or  to  build  upon  it,  or  to  strive 
constantly  for  its  attainment,  is  itself  inherently  weak,  and 
only  increases  the  action  of  disturbing  forces,  and  clogs 
and  thwarts  the  course  of  the  people,  and  delays,  while  it 
cannot  prevent,  its  inevitable  coming,  in  the  development 
of  the  nation. 

The  freedom  of  the  people,  or  political  freedom,  presumes 
that  the  political  order  shall  conform  to  the  will  of  the  po- 
litical people.  It  is  not  to  be  restricted  by  forms  and  insti- 
tutions which  are  alien  from  it,  nor  compressed  into  the  cast 
of  some  exotic  mould,  and  these  limitations,  while  they 
impede  the  free  course  of  the  people,  may  induce  a  spirit 
not  of  law,  but  of  legality,  which  may  be  the  worst  tyranny. 
It  is  not  to  be  directed  by  the  exclusive  aim  and  interest 
of  an  individual  or  a  family  or  a  class,  which  are  over  but' 
not  of  the  nation,  and  in  this  there  is  the  inception  of  a 
despotism,  not  the  freedom  of  the  people. 

The  freedom  of  the  people,  or  political  freedom,  pre- 
sumes also  that  the  political  order  shall  express  the  con- 
scious spirit  of  the  people.  It  is  to  be  open  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  people.  The  policy  and  laws  are  not  to  be 
kept  as  the  mystery  of  a  craft,  or  the  tradition  of  a  caste, 
nor  as  the  speciality  of  a  class.  The  political  design  is 
not  to  be  locked  up  as  a  state  secret,  nor  to  be  conducted 


THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION  OF  FREEDOM.    119 


by  hidden  bureaus.  The  laws  are  not  to  be  withheld,  as 
if  written  only  in  volumes  where  the  people  cannot  have 
access  to  them,  but  the  whole  course  and  action  of  the 
state  is  to  be  open  to  the  knowledge  of  the  people,  and  its 
loyalty  and  its  obedience  is  to  be  the  assertion  of  a  con- 
scious spirit. 

The  realization  of  the  freedom  of  the  nation,  or  political 
freedom,  is  in  rights.  Freedom  embodies  itself  in  rights, 
as  in  rights  also  there  is  the  manifestation  of  personality. 
The  institution  of  positive  rights  defines  in  the  nation  the 
sphere  of  a  realized  freedom.  There  is  in  freedom  the 
right  which  is  fundamental  in  the  rights  of  man ;  freedom 
is  the  eternal  right  of  a  man  to  be  himself.  It  is  not  the 
exclusive  claim  of  an  individual  or  a  family  or  a  class,  but 
of  man,  as  the  nation  has  no  lower  nor  special  end,  but  a 
universal  end  in  the  rights  of  man. 

The  freedom  of  the  people  as  it  becomes  determinate 
establishes  itself  in  rights,  and  in  its  advance  it  raises  bar- 
riers in  the  institution  of  rights  against  alien  forces  and 
evil  influences,  the  principalities  and  powers  that  hinder 
and  thwart  it.  It  is  only  in  rights  that  freedom  is  actual- 
ized in  the  nation  ;  it  is  only  in  positive  rights  that  it 
gains  a  sure  foothold  in  its  progress ;  they  alone  afford  the 
requisite  strength  and  security  for  it.  In  rights  freedom 
is  guarded  against  denial,  fortified  against  fraud,  shielded 
against  conspiracy  and  surprise  and  sudden  overthrow. 
In  the  same  measure  in  which  freedom  fails  to  establish 
itself  in  rights,  whose  institution  is  in  law,  it  is  liable  to  the 
whim  and  the  caprice  of  men,  and  the  highest  interest  is 
left  to  the  adjustment  of  changing  circumstance.  This 
secure  institution  and  organization  of  freedom  in  positive 
rights  is  the  work  of  the  statesman.  It  demands  the  more 
comprehensive  political  sagacity.  Freedom  does  not  gain 
much  while  it  is  held  in  an  ideal  conception,  and  is  left  to 
the  pages  of  scholars,  or  the  rhymes  of  poets,  or  the  voices 


120  THE  NATION. 

of  orators.  These  are  not  laws,  and  the  condition  of  every 
advance  in  freedom  is  its  assertion  in  laws  and  its  organiza- 
tion in  rights.  It  has  in  their  strong  guaranties  alone  pro- 
tection against  selfish  interests  and  private  aims. 

The  identity  of  freedom  and  of  rights  in  the  nation  is 
implied  in  their  subsistence  in  personality,  and  thus  we 
rannot  conceive  of  the  actual  existence  of  an  individual 
in  a  civil  or  political  relation,  or  of  a  nation  in  which  there 
is  freedom  but  no  rights.1  The  second  clause  of  the  thir- 
teenth article  of  the  Constitution  is  not  superfluous,  and 
the  nation  necessarily  can  only  enforce  the  declaration  of 
freedom  by  the  institution  and  the  maintenance,  through 
laws,  of  rights.  To  grant  freedom  but  no  rights  would 
be  fit  subject  for  the  fool  who  is  always  about  the  king's 
court  in  Shakespeare,  and  fit  work  only  for  some  king's 
jester. 

The  freedom  of  the  people  never  attains  its  perfect  ex- 
pression in  the  organization  of  rights.  It  may  strive  un- 
ceasingly toward  this  end,  and  with  toil  and  energy  it 
may  shape  them  in  their  clearness  and  strength,  and  yet  in 
its  spirit  it  is  always  beyond  them.  They  can  thus,  in  no 
moment  in  the  history  of  a  people,  be  regarded  as  having 
obtained  their  ultimate  form,  nor  can  the  people  have  in 
them  the  perfect  satisfaction  of  its  aim.  Its  endeavor  is 
always  to  mould  the  organization  of  rights  toward  the  ex- 
pression of  its  ampler  and  fairer  freedom. 

As  the  freedom  of  the  people  is  established  in  rights, 
these  rights,  through  laws,  may  be  embodied  in  institu- 
tions. There  may  thus  often  be  traced  in  the  form  and 
growth  of  these  institutions  the  progress  of  rights  and  the 
line  of  their  advancement.  These  institutions  often  have 
thus  of  themselves  an  historical  increase,  and  are  wrought 
into  shape  and  use  in  the  history  of  the  people.  They  are 

1  "  Freedom  in  its  civil  and  political  conception,  can  never  be  separated  from 
the  process  of  rights  which  is  its  ground  and  its  support."  —  Bluntschli's  Allgem. 
Statsrechts,  vol.  ii.  p.  488. 


THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION  OF  FREEDOM.    121 

guaranties  in  which  rights  are  fortified  and  stand  as  the 
i  barriers  against  the  betrayal  of  freedom  from  within,  or  its 
i  invasion  from  without.  They  endure  against  the  assump- 
|  tions  of  arbitrary  power,  and  in  them,  as  in  a  retreat,  free- 
dom may  hold  out  through  evil  days  of  apathy,  and  is 
secure  against  overthrow  alike  from  the  agitation  of  the 
many  and  the  conspiracy  of  the  few. .  The  illustration  of 
these  institutions  is,  for  instance,  in  the  organization  and 
administration  of  the  township ;  in  the  trial  by  jury ;  in 
the  office  of  the  justice  of  the  peace ;  in  the  common  law. 
These  institutions  have  often  also  their  expression,  while 
i  their  exact  form  is  of  slight  significance,  in  some  sturdy 
maxim  of  the  people,  some  "  words  that  have  hands  and 
feet,"  some  sentence  in  whose  clear  light  the  way  is  seen 
through  dangerous  channels,  and  whose  signal  is  the  alarm 
of  freedom.  An  illustration  of  this  is  in  the  phrase  which 
denotes  the  right  to  the  sanctity  of  home,  —  "  every  man's 
house  is  his  castle." 

There  are  certain  conceptions  of  political  freedom  which, 
in  their  error  and  their  defect  from  its  necessary  concep- 
tion, can  tend  only  to  thwart  or  delay  its  progress. 

It  is  represented  as  in  itself  a  negation,  and  as  appear- 
ing in  the  check  or  balance  of  opposing  forces,  or  in  the 
restriction  of  adverse  power.  This  has  its  postulate  in  the 
assumption  that  power  is  in  itself  essentially  dangerous  in 
the  state,  and  that  freedom  is  manifested  in  the  construc- 
tion of  certain  other  powers  to  stand  against  the  current 
and  keep  it  back  ;  and  these,  then,  since  danger  is  inherent 
in  power,  require  the  building  of  others  to  offset  them,  and 
so  the  erection  is  to  go  on  indefinitely,  and  the  degree  of 
freedom  is  graduated  by  the  successive  and  alternative  re- 
strictions of  power.  It  is  indeed  true  that  freedom,  in  the 
conditions  of  history,  presumes  an  unceasing  conflict,  and 
must  overcome  adverse  elements,  and  at  every  advance 
intrench  itself  in  positive  rights.  But  freedom  is  in  itself 


122  THE  NATION. 

a  determinate  power,  and  of  itself  advancing ;  rights  only 
denote  in  their  institution  its  line  of  march.  And  checks 
and  guaranties  have  only  the  strength  which  they  may 
obtain  from  the  power  which  shapes  and  holds  the  check, 
and  asserts  and  maintains  the  guaranty.  Freedom  is  no 
negation  as  is  assumed  in  this  conception  ;  it  is  not  found 
in  the  construction  of  the  most  exact  and  formal  balance 
of  opposing  interests  or  classes  or  factions.  The  balance 
in  itself  could  effect  nothing,  and  instead  of  the  living 
unity,  which  is  the  condition  of  freedom,  it  implies  the 
disintegration  of  society  which  it  regards  as  only  the  com- 
bination of  certain  separate  interests  which  are  to  be  pitted 
against  each  other.  Freedom  is  not  in  this  negation,  but 
in  the  positive  determination  of  the  people,  and  conversely 
the  weakness  which  appears  in  the  decay  of  national 
power  is  in  the  loss  of  freedom,  when  the  people  canj 
assert  no  rights,  and  even  in  its  spirit  can  apprehend  none. ! 
Freedom  is  alone  the  power  of  the  people  in  its  organic 
and  moral  life ;  it  is  the  might  of  the  living  people ;  it 
may  break  in  one  moment  the  fetters  which  centuries  of 
oppression  have  forged,  and  throw  down  prison  walls  in 
which  evil  dominations  have  labored  to  immure  the  spirit] 
of  man. 

Political  freedom  is  represented  also  as  existent  only  asj 
some  spectral  ideal,  some  remote  abstraction.  It  is  de-j 
scribed  as  some  imaginary  figure,  if  it  have  shape  or  form, 
which  exists,  in  its  perfectness,  in  isolation  from  the  body 
politic,  and  distant  from  the  organization  of  the  nation.! 
But  the  ideal  is  not  the  contradiction  of  the  real ;  it  is  in 
identity  with  it,  and  is  striving  always  toward  a  more  per- 
fect embodiment  in  it ;  the  ideal  is  not  the  unreal.  There 
are  sometimes  those  who-,  in  the  guise  of  a  specious  devo-j 
tion  to  freedom,  are  ready  to  consent  to  the  dismember-j 
meat  of  the  nation,  and  for  some  spectral  and  abstract; 
presentation  of  freedom  would  conspire  for  the  destruction; 


THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION   OF  FREEDOM.          123 

of  the  whole  organization  in  which  it  has  toiled  toward  its 
realization,  however  imperfect  its  advance.  This  is  that 
blind  fanaticism,  that  weak  egoism,  which  is  the  unreason 
of  the  state.  These  visionaries  cannot  build  again  in  the 
ruins  it  was  so  easy  to  make ;  it  is  only  destructive  forces 
that  work  thus  swiftly ;  freedom  will  not  follow  at  their 
behest,  nor  go  and  return  at  their  beckoning,  nor  enter 
the  abodes  to  which  they  invite  it,  and  it  is  only  with 
long  and  patient  toil  and  sacrifice  that  the  organization  is 
won  by  the  people  in  which  it  dwells. 

Political  freedom  is  represented  as  a  power  formed  in 
external  limitations,  or  as  construed  in  the  formal  relations 
of  the  individual  and  the  nation.  Mr.  Emerson  says  it 
is  the  largest  liberty  compatible  with  the  liberty  of  every 
other  man.  But  freedom  is  not  described  in  this  ex- 
ternal limitation,  nor  is  the  freedom  of  one  the  restriction 
of  the  freedom  of  another.  This  confounds  freedom  with 
arbitrariness,  and  it  is  only  willfulness  that  is  incompatible. 
Freedom  is  not  thus  attained  through  infinite  individual 
antagonisms.  The  largest  freedom  in  each  is  consistent 
with  the  same  in  all.  This  conception  empties  freedom  of 
all  moral  content,  and  it  could  be  constructive  only  of  a 
formal,  not  a  real  freedom.  It  could  not  be  the  postulate 
of  the  freedom  of  the  people  in  its  organic  and  moral  be- 
ing and  relations  in  history.  The  freedom  of  one  is  no 
limitation  to  the  freedom  of  another,  but  an  aid  toward  his 
emancipation. 

Political  freedom  is  represented  as  something  which 
may  be  bestowed  or  withheld  by  some  external  power.  It 
is  apprehended  as  the  circumstance  of  a  formal  law,  the 
consequentjn  a  formal  order ;  ifc  is  described  as  the  boon 
of  some  priest  or  emperor,  some  preacher  or  convention. 
It  is  true  that  a  power  on  earth  may  acknowledge  or 
deny  it,  and  may  do  much  to  aid  its  growth  or  to  crush  it 


124  THE   NATION. 

in  the  spirits  of  men,  but  it  belongs  to  none,  neither  priest, 
nor  preacher,  nor  president,  nor  congress,  nor  emperor, 
nor  armies,  to  bestow  it.  It  is  not  received  as  a  gift ;  it 
belongs  to  the  spirit  of  man,  and  therefore  is  only  of  God ; 
and  only  as  the  personality  of  man  has  its  subsistence  in 
God,  is  emancipation  wrought  in  it ;  and  only  as  the  nation 
is  a  moral  person,  in  the  crises  of  its  deliverance,  is  He 
recognized  as  its  deliverer. 

There  is  a  representation  of  the  origin  and  nature  of 
political  freedom  which,  as  affecting  the  conception  of  the 
moral  being  of  the  nation,  involves  the  most  false"  of  polit- 
ical sophistries.  It  is  the  theory  which  is  built  upon  the 
postulate  that  man  possesses  a  real  freedom  in  a  condi- 
tion precedent  to  the  nation,  and  that  he  then  surrenders 
a  certain  part  of  it  upon  his  entrance  into  it.  Freedom  is 
represented  as  existent  in  this  condition  which  is  prece- 
dent to  society,  in  its  perfectness,  and  as  diminished  when 
man  enters  society,  and  to  that  extent  he  suffers  a  depri- 
vation of  it  in  consideration  of  certain  other  advantages 
which  are  secured  to  him  in  its  stead.  Blackstone  says, 
"  Every  man,  when  he  enters  into  society,  gives  up  a  part 
of  his  natural  liberty,  as  the  price  of  so  valuable  a  pur- 
chase." 1  This  part  is  regarded  as  surrendered  in  order 
to  secure  the  residue,  or  as  exchanged  for  certain  other 
advantages,  held  at  an  equal  valuation. 

This  representation  of  the  origin  and  nature  of  freedom 
proceeds  on  the  assumption  of  the  social  contract.  It  is 
implied,  also,  in  the  position  of  Mr.  Emerson,  which  was 
also  the  position  of  Kant,  when  the  liberty  of  one  person 
in  society  is  the  possible  limitation  or  restriction  of  the  lib- 
erty of  another  person. 

But  this  condition  in  which  man  is  represented  as  exist- 
ing anterior  or  exterior  to  society,  and  in  which  freedom  is 
conceived  as  flourishing,  has  no  reality.  It  is  a  fiction,  and 

l  1  Bl.  Comm.  125. 


THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION   OF   FREEDOM.          125 

is  only  a  repetition  of  the  picture  sketched  so  many  times, 
and  for  so  many  uses,  in  the  imagination  of  political  theo- 
rists. In  the  actual  condition  of  man,  in  so  far  as  he  is 
withdrawn  from  the  organization  of  the  state,  there  is  no 
freedom.  The  records  of  the  actual  condition  are  of  a 
life  in  which  man  is  most  of  all  a  slave,  and  a  slave  to  the 
lowest  and  meanest  wants.  He  seems  the  subject  of  na- 
ture, and  not  one  who  is  to  assert  dominion  over  it.  It  is 
a  stage  of  abject  dependence.  There  is  no  freedom,  and 
the  recognition  of  no  rights,  but  each  is  exposed  to  the 
open  wrongs  of  every  enemy.  There  is  no  security  for 
life,  or  liberty,  or  property;  The  freedom,  then,  which  man 
is  supposed  to  barter  away  in  a  certain  part,  upon  entering 
society,  in  order  to  keep  the  remainder,  has  no  existence. 
It  is  an  imaginary  possession  which  then  afterwards,  by 
an  imaginary  transfer,  is  conveyed  to  the  state.  The  prop- 
osition falls  with  the  fiction  of  the  social  contract  in  which 
it  has  its  premise. 

It  bears  also  the  conception  of  private  property  into  the 
state,  and  makes  freedom  itself  a  concern  of  formal  trans- 
fer and  exchange.  It  contradicts  the  necessary  concep- 
tion of  freedom,  which  is  no  longer  a  living  and  moral 
power,  but  apprehended  as  something  which  the  owner 
can  parcel  out  and  traffic  in ;  and  it  is  by  trade  in  freedom 
that  man  is  represented  as  entering  the  state,  and  he  not 
only  buys  but  sells  out. 

To  this  there  are  also  the  same  objections  as  to  the  so- 
cial contract ;  and  men  do  not  from  a  precedent  condition 
enter  the  state  voluntarily,  nor  with  specifications  in  this 
style.  It  contradicts  also  the  necessary  conception  of 
freedom  as  involving  law,  when  it  is  thus  represented,  for 
the  nation  is  the  sphere  of  law.  It  could  then  also,  if  it 
were  an  actual  occurrence,  result  only  in  a  formal  free- 
dom, since  the  amount  which  is  retained  in  the  state 
would  have  its  formal  reduction  in  the  amount  of  the 


126  THE  NATION. 

entrance  fee,  which  is  the  condition  of  the  purchase  or 
exchange. 

This  proposition  is  inconsistent  also  with  the  common 
language  of  men,  and  there  is  scarcely  any  fact  of  deeper 
significance,  or  capable  of  wider  illustration,  than  that 
which  makes  a  synonym  of  citizen  and  freeman. 

This  proposition  implies  also  a  conception  of  natural 
freedom  which  is  not  a  real  freedom,  but  the  arbitrari- 
ness of  the  individual,  and  the  freedom  of  the  whole  is 
then  only  in  the  limitation  of  the  arbitrariness  of  each. 

The  contrast  to  this  false  conception  of  freedom,  was 
given  in  words  worthy  of  an  inaugural,  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  history  of  the  nation,  by  a  governor  of  one  of 
the  early  commonwealths,  —  "  There  is  a  twofold  liberty, 
natural  —  I  mean  as  our  nature  is  now  corrupt  —  and 
civil  or  federal.  The  first  is  common  to  man  with  beasts 
and  other  creatures.  By  this  man,  as  he  stands  in  relation 
to  man,  simply  hath  liberty  to  do  what  he  lists ;  it  is  a  lib- 
erty to  evil  as  well  as  to  good.  This  liberty  is  incompati- 
ble and  inconsistent  with  authority.  The  exercise  and 
maintaining  of  this  liberty  makes  men  grow  more  evil,  and 
in  time  be  worse  than  brute  beasts :  '  omnes  sumus  licentia 
deteriores.'  This  is  that  great  enemy  of  truth  and  peace, 
that  wild  beast,  which  all  the  ordinances  of  God  are  bent 
against  to  restrain  and  subdue  it.  The  other  kind  of  lib- 
erty I  call  civil  or  federal ;  it  may  also  be  termed  moral,  in 
reference  to  the  covenant  between  God  and  man,  in  the 
moral  law,  and  the  political  covenants  and  constitutions 
amongst  men  themselves.  This  liberty  is  the  proper  end 
and  object  of  authority,  and  cannot  subsist  without  it ;  and 
it  is  a  liberty  to  that  only  which  is  good,  just,  and  honest. 
This  liberty  you  are  to  stand  for  not  only  with  the  hazard 
of  your  goods,  but  of  your  lives  if  need  be.  Whatsoever 
crosseth  this  is  not  authority  but  a  distemper  thereof.  This 
liberty  is  maintained  and  exercised  in  a  way  of  subjection 


THE  NATION  THE  REALIZATION   OF  FREEDOM.          127 

to  authority ;  it  is  of  the  same  kind  of  liberty  wherewith 
Christ  hath  made  us  free."  l 

The  great  epochs  in  the  lives  of  nations  in  the  modern 
world,  have  been  the  realization  of  the  freedom  of  man. 
It  has  been  said  that  what  the  German  Reformation  whis- 
pered in  the  closet,  the  French  Revolution  shouted  on  the 
house-tops,  that  man  should  be  free ;  and  the  end  of  the 
American  War  was  the  assertion  that  the  nation  in  its 
conscious  spirit  is  the  realization  of  freedom,  and  that  in 
the  freedom  of  humanity  the  nation  has  its  conquest  and  its 
end.  In  the  nation  freedom  is  real,  and  as  freedom  has 
its  subsistence  in  the  nation,  so  also  in  slavery  is  the  re- 
sistance to  the  being  of  the  nation.  The  nation  and  slav- 
ery cannot  abide  in  one  house,  but  at  last  the  one  or  the 
other  must  be  driven  out.  The  nation  must  overcome  and 
destroy  slavery,  or  at  last  be  destroyed  by  it.  There  is  in 
history  the  evidence  of  this,  and  as  it  appears  in  the  an- 
cient and  in  the  modern  world,  —  in  the  fall  of  Rome  and 
the  uprising  of  America. 

The  antagonism  with  slavery  is  in  the  being  of  the  na- 
tion. For  as  the  nation  is  a  moral  person,  and  personality 
is  realized  in  freedom,  slavery  is  its  necessary  antagonist, 
and  as  it  is  the  realization  of  rights,  and  in  its  universal 
aim  of  the  rights  of  humanity,  slavery  with  the  denial  of 
these  rights  and  with  the  consequent  degradation  of  hu- 
manity, is  its  immediate  antagonist. 

There  is  always  a  tendency  in  those  withdrawn  from  the 
battle,  and  its  "  confused  noise  and  garments  rolled  in 
blood,"  to  bear  its  issues  into  some  ideal  and  abstract  sphere. 
Thus  the  war  is  represented  as  the  immediate  conflict  of 
the  antagonistic  ideas,  —  freedom  and  slavery.  The  reality 
is  other  than  this  ;  the  hosts  are  mustered  in  no  intellectual 
arena,  and  the  forces  called  into  its  field  are  other  than 
spectral  ideas.  This  tendency  to  resolve  history  into  the 

1  Winthrop's  Journal,  vol.  ii.  p.  13. 


128  THE  NATION. 

conflict  and  progress  of  abstract  ideas,  or  the  development 
of  what  is  called  an  intellectual  conception,  can  apprehend 
nothing  of  the  real  passion  of  history.  It  knows  not 
what,  with  so  deep  significance,  is  called  the  burden  of 
history.  It  enters  not  into  the  travail  of  time,  it  discerns 
not  the  presence  of  a  living  Person  in  the  judgments  which 
are  the  crises  of  the  world.  It  comprehends  only  some 
intellectual  conflict  in  the  issue  of  necessary  laws,  but 
not  the  strife  of  a  living  humanity.  The  process  of  a 
legal  formula,  the  evolution  of  a  logical  sequence,  the  su- 
premacy of  abstract  ideas,  this  has  nothing  to  compensate 
for  the  agony  and  the  suffering  and  the  sacrifice  of  the 
actual  battle,  and  it  discerns  not  the  real  glory  of  the  de- 
liverance of  humanity,  the  real  triumph  borne  through 
but  over  death.  There  was  in  the  war,  in  the  issue  which 
came  upon  us,  "  even  upon  us,"  and  in  the  sacrifice  of  those 
who  were  called,  the  battle  of  the  nation  for  its  very  being, 
and  it  was  the  nation  which  slavery  met  in  mortal  strife. 
The  inevitable  conflict  was  of  slavery  with  the  life  of  tho 
nation. 

There  is  no  vague  rhetoric,  but  a  deep  truth  in  the 
words,  —  "liberty  and  union,  now  and  forever,  one  and 
inseparable."  They  are  worthy  to  live  upon  the  lips  of 
the  people,  for  there  can  be  no  union  without  freedom, 
since  slavery  has  its  necessary  result  in  the  dissolution  of 
the  being  of  the  nation,  and  there  can  be  no  freedom  with- 
out union,  for  it  is  only  in  the  being  of  the  nation  that 
freedom  becomes  real. 


CHAPTER 

THE    SOVEREIGNTY    OF    THE    NATION. 

THE  freedom  of  the  nation  has  its  correlate  in  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  nation.  Pojitical  sovereignty  is  the  asser- 
tion of  the  self-determinate  will  of  the  organic  people,  and 
in  this  there  is  the  manifestation  of  its  freedom.  It  is  in 
and  through  the  determination  of  its  sovereignty  that  the 
order  of  the  nation  is  constituted  and  maintained.1 

The  existence  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation,  or  polit- 
ical sovereignty,  is  indicated  by  certain  signs  or  notes 
which  are  universal :  these  are,  independence,  authority, 
supremacy,  unity,  and  majesty. 

The  sovereignty  of  the  nation,  or  political  sovereignty, 
implies  independence  ;  it  is  subject  to  no  external  control, 
but  its  action  is  in  correspondence  with  its  own  determina- 
tion. It  implies  authority  ;  it  has  the  strength  inherent  in 
its  own  determination  to  assert  and  maintain  it.  It  implies 
supremacy ;  this  does  not  presume  the  presence  of  other 
powers  which  are  inferior,  but  it  is  itself  ultimate  and  can 
be  subordinate  to  none  ;  it  is  suprema  potestas.  It  im- 
plies unity ;  this  belongs  to  the  necessary  conception  of 
the  will  from  which  sovereignty  proceeds,  and  in  the  will 

1  The  necessary  correlation  of  sovereignty  and  freedom  was  expressed  in  the 
common  illustration  of  the  old  Protestant  theologians,  —  "Liberum  et  volunta- 
rium  stint  synonymia,  ac  voluntatem  non  liberam  dicere,  est  perinde  ac  si  quis 
dicere  velit,  calidum  absque  calore."  Hegel  has  a  very  beautiful  statement  of 
the  proposition  (Philosophic  des  Rechts,  pp.  20-60).  "  Denn  das  frei  ist  der  Wille. 
Wille  ohne  freiheit  ist  ein  leeres  Wort."  —  Ibid.  p.  23.  Stahl  says,  "Desswegen 
fallen  auch  Freiheit  und  Wille  in  ihrem  urbegriff  vollig  zusammen,  der  Wille 
ist  frei,  und  es  ist  nichts  Anderes,  frei  als  nur  der  Wille."  —  Philosophic  de» 
Rechts,  vol.  ii.  sec.  1,  p.  116. 


130  THE  NATION. 

alone,  in  which  there  is  the  highest  and  essential  unity,  is 
the  postulate  of  sovereignty ;  the  presence,  thus,  of  sep- 
arate supreme  powers,  to  which  equal  obedience  is  to  be 
rendered,  involves  a  moral  contradiction.  It  is  character- 
ized by  an  inherent  majesty ;  it  is  a  majesty  which  manifests 
itself  in  all  the  symbols  of  the  state ;  it  is  not  simply  the 
dignity  of  noble  action,  but  it  is  the  conscious  possession 
of  powers  and  obligations,  on  which  depend  the  highest 
j  issues  in  the  history  of  humanity.  This  has  had  its  ex- 
pression always  in  the  historical  nations,  appearing  in  the 
purpose  and  action  of  the  people  in  its  higher  national  de- 
velopment.1 

These  are  the  indices  by  which  the  presence  of  political 
sovereignty  is  indicated,  and  in  them  there  is  its  external 
manifestation.  There  are  in  its  content  also  certain  ca- 
pacities. 

It  is  inalienable  ;  the  state  cannot  transfer  it  to  another 
nor  divest  itself  of  it,  except  that  in  the  act  itself  its  own 
existence  and  its  own  freedom  terminates. 

It  is  indivisible  ;  a  divisive  sovereignty  is  a  contradiction 
of  that  supremacy  which  is  implied  in  its  necessary  concep- 
tion, and  inconsistent  with  its  subsistence  in  the  organic 
will. 

It  is  indefeasable ; 2  it  cannot,  through  legal  forms  and 
legists'  devices,  be  annulled  and  avoided,  nor  can  it  be 
voluntarily  abdicated  to  be  voluntarily  resumed,  but  in- 
volves a  continuity  of  power  and  action. 

It  is  irresponsible  to  any  external  authority;   there  is 

1  The  peoples  which  were  made  subject  to  Rome,  were  thereby  divested  of  a 
separate  sovereignty,  and  to  all  terms  made  with  them,  the  Romans  added,  — 
"  Imperium  majestatemque  populi  Romani,  conservato  sine  donomalo.  —  Livy, 
bk.  38,  sec.  2. 

"  Majestas  est  amplitudo  ac  dignitas  civitatis.  Is  earn  minuit,  qui  exercitum 
hostibus  populi  Romani  tradidit,  —  minuit  is,  qui  per  vim  multitudinis,  rem  ad 
seditionem  vocavit.  —  Cicero,  De,  Oratore,  bk.  ii.  sec.  38. 

2  It  is  incapable  by  any  juggle  based  upon  legal  analogies,  of  being  defeated 
or  abrogated.    In  the  expression  of  James  Wilson,  "  sovereignty  is  and  remains 
in  the  people."  — Jamison's  Constitutional  Convention,  p.  20. 


THE  SOVEREIGNTY  OF  THE  NATION.        131 

none  on  earth  over  it  to  whom  it  has  to  justify  its  course, 
or  in  whose  conclusion  it  has  to  abide. 

It  is  comprehensive  of  the  whole  political  order  ;  it  acts 
in  its  determination  as  organic  through  the  whole  political 
body,  arid  its  authority  is  conterminus  with  the  whole  ;  it 
works  through  all  the  members,  and  in  all  the  offices  and 
all  the  organs  of  the  state. 

The  sovereignty  of  the  nation,  or  political  sovereignty, 
primarily  presumes  the  power  in  the  political  people  to  de- 
termine the  form  of  its  own  political  life.  This  cannot  be 
imposed  upon  it  from  without.  It  cannot  be  referred  to 
the  dictation  of  any  power  over  and  separate  from  the  na- 
tion, as  some  imperator.  It  cannot  be  restricted  to  certain 
special  formulas,  and  the  nation  is  not  to  be  compelled  to 
shape  its  order  and  organization  after  some  theory  and  pre- 
conception of  state  forms  which  may  be  alien  from  it,  and 
thwart  the  purpose  or  defeat  the  hope  of  the  people.  The 
oppression  of  a  mere  form  or  system  in  politics,  may  be- 
come the  extremest  tyranny,  and  far  more  crushing  than 
an  imperial  power ;  for  the  will  of  the  solitary  tyrant  can- 
not have  so  universal  a  sway,  and  there  is  always  hope  of 
change,  but  the  tyranny  of  a  form  or  a  system  of  itself 
precludes  change,  and  prevents  progress,  while  it  outlives 
men  and  generations.  In  its  own  sovereignty  and  in  its 
own  free  spirit,  the  political  people  is  to  mould  its  own  po- 
litical life,  and  to  embody  in  it  its  own  ideal,  and  to  appre- 
hend in  it  its  own  aim. 

There  have  been  certain  theories,  which  have  only  a 
formal  and  historical  interest,  as  to  the  residence  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  nation  in  its  normal  process.  These 
assume  the  identity  of  its  sovereignty  with  a  certain  form, 
fop  which  then  a  universality  is  claimed,  and  in  their  con- 
clusion, they  have  become  the  assertion  of  a  sovereignty 
external  to  and  against  the  nation,  which  in  any  form, 
whether  of  an  individual  or  a  system,  is  the  very  defini- 
tion of  despotism.  Their  interest  is  merely  illustrative. 


132  THE  NATION. 

It  is  said  that  the  sovereignty  is  inherent  in  a  family  or 
a  certain  number  of  families  constituting  the  special  aristo- 
cratical  or  regal  organization,  or  caste,  whom  the  possession 
of  certain  qualities  or  some  circumstance  may  at  the  out- 
set have  designated,  and  thereafter  it  is  to  remain  contin- 
uous in  them  by  the  necessary  and  organic  law  of  the  state. 

This  is  the  contradiction  of  the  real  sovereignty  of  the 
nation  and  its  freedom,  and  is  the  assertion  not  of  a  sov- 
ereignty in  and  of  the  nation,  but  a  sovereignty  external  to 
it.  It  is  this  which  has  dragged  the  people  to  war  after  war 
to  decide  a  disputed  succession,  where  the  whole  was  em- 
broiled with  individual  claims  and  family  divisions.  There 
is  no  family  or  number  of  families  which  have  an  original 
and  indefeasable  right  to  govern.  It  is  not  subsistent  in 
the  ancestry  of  a  family,  or  a  tribe,  or  a  race,  but  contin- 
ues only  in  the  nation.  It  belongs  to  no  individual  or 
family  save  only  as  they  are  invested  with  its  exercise  of 
and  by  the  nation.  The  right  of  government,  which  is 
alone  of  divine  right,  the  right  in  the  nation  as  a  moral 
person,  is  of  no  uncertain  succession  and  of  no  transient 
tenure.  It  is  not  the  exclusive  heritage  of  a  family,  and 
is  not  transmitted  in  the  entail  of  its  estates.  "The  pat- 
rimonial doctrine  of  the  state,"  says  Bluntschli,  "'which 
regards  it  as  the  property  of  the  prince,  and  therefore  as- 
cribes sovereignty  only  to  him,  and  the  absolutist  doctrine 
of  the  state  which  identifies  it  with  the  individual  ruler, 
both  forget  that  all  the  might  of  the  prince  is  only  the 
combined  might  of  the  people,  and  that  the  people  and 
the  nation  as  the  organization  of  rights  remain,  although 
princes  and  dynasties  change  and  perish."1  The  recent 
justification  of  this  proposition  has  been  in  some  represen- 
tative principle,  as  for  instance  the  sovereignty  is  regarded 
as  representative  of  the  unity  of  the  nation,  —  Coleridge  ; 
or  of  the  permanence  of  the  family  in  the  nation,  —  Mau- 
rice ;  or  of  the  personality  of  the  nation,  —  Hegel. 

1  Attgem  Statsrechts,  vol.  ii.  p.  11. 


THE  SOVEREIGNTY  OF  THE  NATION.        133 


t  is  said  that  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  is  resident 
in  certain  abstract  ideas  or  principles,  as  justice  or  reason. 
This  has  been  assumed  by  publicists  who  have  sought  thus 
to  modify  the  conception  of  popular  sovereignty.  Koyer 
Collard  gave  a  definite  statement  to  the  theory :  "  There 
is  an  individual  and  a  moral  element  in  society.  To  make 
the  majority  of  individuals  sovereign,  is  popular  sove- 
reignty. When,  with'  or  without  their  consent,  this  blind 
strong  sovereignty  passes  under  the  control  of  an  individ- 
ual or  a  class,  without  changing  its  character,  it  becomes 
a  wiser  and  more  temperate  authority,  but  it  is  yet  rude 
force,  and  remains  always  such,  and  becomes  the  root  of 
absolute  power  and  privileges.  If,  on  the  contrary,  soci- 
ety be  founded  on  the  moral  element,  that  is,"  on  justice, 
then  is  justice  sovereign,  for  justice  is  the  law  of  rights." 

This  assertion  of  sovereignty  as  existent  in  an  abstract 
principle  or  law,  whatever  its  quality,  as  justice,  or  reason, 
or  love,  is  illustrative  of  the  tendency  to  convey  the  whole 
subject  of  politics  into  a  realm  of  mere  abstractions,  and 
to  merge  the  state  into  a  formal  idealism.  The  nation  has 
certainly  in  justice,  the  law  which  is  implied  in  its  being 
as  a  moral  person,  and  the  condition  of  its  being,  and  must 
conform  to  the  reason  of  things,  but  the  nation  is  itself  an 
organic  being,  and  invested  with  actual  powers.  Sove- 
reignty is  existent  in  the  nation  only  as  it  is  an  organic 
and  moral  person,  and  in  it  and  through  it,  justice  is  as- 
serted and  realized  in  a  moral  order. 

This  proposition  is  the  assertion  of  a  specious  and  ab- 
stract ideal,  and  becomes  the  substitution  of  a  law  or  a 
system  for  the  determination  of  the  organic  will.  It  is 
inconsequent,  since  an  abstract  conception,  however  high, 
which  is  thus  asserted,  can  have  no  real  strength.  It  is 
moreover  perilous,  since  it  avoids  the  foundation  in  an 
organic  being,  of  the  organic  and  moral  relations  of  the 
nation.  It  creates  a  tendency  to  regard  with  indifference 
the  real  life  and  conflict  of  the  nation,  in  comparison  with 


134  THE  NATION. 

the  barren  conceptions  of  the  idealist,  and  to  consent,  on 
the  pretense  of  an  abstract  reason  or  justice,  to  its  destruc- 
tion and  to  conspire  with  its  dismemberment. 

This  proposition  is  also  sometimes  connected  with  the 
assumption  of  popular  sovereignty  in  its  lowest  and  crudest 
form ;  — in  disregard  of  the  being  and  government  of  the 
whole,  —  the  assertion  of  what  is  represented  as  the  re- 
served sovereignty  of  the  people,  is  assumed  by  some  in- 
dividual, on  the  ground  of  his  subjective  conception  of 
justice,  which  is  exalted  in  this  unlimited  egoism.  This 
was  the  attitude  of  those  who  regarded  the  battle  for  the 
nation  and  its  unity  and  authority,  at  least  with  indiffer- 
ence, and  as  devoid  of  moral  content,  until  it  should  be- 
come an  immediate  war  against  slavery. 

It  is  said  that  the  sovereignty  inheres  in  the  people  sim- 
ply as  the  collective  people,  in  a  certain  locality.  This  is 
the  premise  in  certain  phases  of  the  preceding  proposition, 
and,  as  in  each  of  them,  in  its  ascribing  sovereignty  to  the 
collective  mass  in  a  certain  locality,  it  is  the  assertion  of  a 
sovereignty  apart  from  the  organic  people. 

This  proposition,  as  before  stated,  postulates  the  power 
of  the  will  of  the  people  in  its  organic  unity,  and  ascribes 
it  to  the  inorganic  mass.  This  formless  crowd  is  destitute 
of  the  consciousness  of  unity  which  is  implied  in  the  will 
and  is  the  condition  of  sovereignty.  The  state  is  resolved 
into  its  atomy.  There  is  no  ground  for  the  continuity 
which  is  presumed  in  government  and  in  law,  and  as 
sovereignty  is  apprehended  as  existent  in  the  momentary 
action  of  the  multitude,  then  in  some  momentary  change 
the  authority  in  government  and  law  expires.  As  sover- 
eignty is  represented  as  resident  in  a  mass  of  individuals 
who  may  coexist  in  any  locality,  and  as  determined  by 
their  momentary  action,  the  conception  of  the  whole  is 
precluded,  and  any  section,  or  faction,  or  sect,  may  with- 
draw if  it  have  the  momentary  strength. 

The  proposition  fails,  also,  because  it  cannot  make  clear 


THE   SOVEREIGNTY  OF  THE  NATION.  135 

iat  the  will  of  the  many  is,  nor  by  what  law  its  sove- 
reignty or  its  reserved  sovereignty  is  to  be  ascertained,  nor 
how  it  is  to  be  exercised.  The  existence  of  a  law,  giving 
authority  to  a  political  majority,  cannot  be  assumed  in  the 
multitude,  si«ce  the  proposition  places  before  us  only  a 
collection  of  individuals,  an  inorganic  mass,  in  whom 
there  is  no  consciousness  of  a  common  political  principle, 
nor  of  the  authority  of  a  common  political  law.  It  is,  as 
before,  the  assumption  of  the  mob  and  not  of  the  people. 

These  theories  are  the  assertion  of  a  sovereignty,  ex- 
ternal to  the  nation,  not  in  it  nor  of  it,  and  identical  only 
with  a  formal  organization. 

The  sovereignty  is  of  the  organic  people,  constituted  as  a 
nation.  It  has  its  condition  in  the  consciousness  of  the 
people,  and  it  is  the  manifestation  of  the  nation  in  its 
moral  personality,  and  therefore,  as  subsistent  in  person- 
ality, it  is  from  God;  —  it  is  from  God  and  of  the  people. 

The  form  and  the  circumstance  of  sovereignty  in  the 
beginning  of  the  historical  life  of  the  people,  are  as  mani- 
fold as  the  incidents  of  the  individual  existence.  But  in 
whatever  form,  and  however  slow  the  development  of  its 
power,  the  sovereignty  subsists  in  the  organic  people,  who 
in  the  consciousness  of  their  unity  and  order  form  the 
nation. 

The  sovereignty  has  not  its  ground  in  the  empty  con- 
ception of  the  people  with  no  conscious  unity  nor  A'ocation 
in  history.  There  is  no  conception  of  sovereignty,  and 
none  of  the  state,  attaching  to  this  mass.  The  numerical 
accumulation  of  men  by  no  multiplication  could  attain  to 
the  sovereignty  of  the  organic  people.  The  sovereignty 
whose  normal  expression  is  law,  and  whose  realization  is 
freedom  and  order,  is  not  in  the  multitude,  nor  in  the 
momentary  action  of  the  multitude,1  but  in  the  will  of  the 

1  When  Rousseau  asserts  an  absolute  sovereignty  as  resident  in  the  momen- 
tary volition  of  the  individual,  and  regards  it  as  always  justified  by  the  act  it- 


136  THE   NATION. 

organic  people  ;  it  is  the  majesty  of  a  people,  the  sov 
ereignty  of  a  nation. 

The  sovereignty  of  the  nation  is  the  original  power 
through  whose  self-determinate  action  the  political  order  is 
established,  and  in  it  all  the  other  powers  subsist  and  from 
it  they  proceed.  It  is  not  merely  the  supreme  power,  in 
respect  to  which  others  are  subordinate,  but  it  is  the  origi- 
nal power  which  determines  all  others.  Its  affirmation  is 
the  supreme  law. 

The  sovereignty  of  ike  nation  has  an  external  and  an 
internal  manifestation.  The  external  sovereignty  is  man- 
ifest in  its  independence  of,  and  in  its  relation  with,  other 
nations.  It  is  its  own  right  to  be  and  to  be  itself;  it 
exists  as  a  power  on  the  earth,  with  other  powers,  equal 
and  self-subsistent.  In  its  external  sovereignty  the  nation 
is  manifest  as  a  power  in  the  historical  order  of  the  world. 
It  is  its  highest  being  ;  it  is  conscious  of  the  authority 
with  which  it  is  invested,  and  the  obligations  in  which  it  is 
involved,  but  it  recognizes  no  human  control,  and  acknowl- 
edges none  nearer  than  very  God,  none  over  it  but  only 
God. 

The  internal  sovereignty  is  manifest  in  its  assertion  in 
its  self-determinate  action,  of  its  political  order  and  organ- 
ization. It  ordains  its  constitution  and  laws,  and  pre- 
scribes its  political  course.  As  all  the  powers  of  the 
nation,  as  an  organic  whole,  proceed  from  and  in  conform- 
ance  to  its  sovereignty,  so  its  constitution  and  its  laws  de- 
fine the  order  and  administration  of  the  whole. 

self,  in  setting  aside  the  whole  existing  organization,  and  renouncing  obedience 
to  the  whole  existing  authority,  and  repudiating  all  obligation  which  has  its 
source  in  a  past  action,  it  contravenes  the  necessary  conception,  both  of  freedom 
and  sovereignty.  The  will  is  emptied  of  all  moral  content,  and  apprehended  as 
identical  only  with  a  transitional  action  —  the  immediate  power  of  choice. 

The  will  in  this  conception  is  not  sovereign  and  is  not  free,  when  its  whole 
determination  is  construed  in  a  momentary  action,  and  its  freedom  is  exhausted 
in  the  play  of  caprice.  Thus,  also,  the  repudiation  of  past  national  obligations 
has  its  precedent  in  the  denial  of  the  being  of  the  nation  in  its  continuity. 


THE  SOVEREIGNTY  OF  THE  NATION.        137 

The  sovereignty  of  the  nation  in  its  determinate  form 
is  law.  Law,  in  its  political  sense,  is  the  formal  assertion 
of  the  will  of  the  political  people.  The  common  defini- 
tion is  thus,  a  rule  of  action  made  obligatory  by  the  state 
upon  all  who  are  subject  to  its  authority.  It  is  the  formal 
affirmation  of  the  will  of  the  people  as  regulative  of  the 
action  of  the  whole  in  its  civil  and  its  political  process.1 

The  ground  of  law  is  not  formal  nor  abstract.  It  is  the 
affirmation  of  the  will  of  the  people,  and  therefore  conse- 
quent from  no  empty  conception  of  the  will.  It  is  the  will 
of  the  people  in  the  nation,  as  organic  and  moral.  It  is 
the  formal  expression  of  the  purpose  of  the  nation,  but  it 
is  none  the  less  the  continuous  purpose  which  is  implied 
in  its  being.  The  conception  of  justice,  the  reason  and 
law  of  right  is  implicit  in  the  nation  as  a  moral  person.  It 
is  in  the  will  in  its  sovereignty  and  the  realization  of  its 
freedom,  and  therefore  all  willful  and  arbitrary  action  is 
in  its  nature  lawless.  The  law  is  laid  in  the  foundation  of 
the  being  of  the  nation.  It  is  then  the  assertion  of  justice, 
which  is  the  fountain  of  all  law,  not  as  the  illusion  of  vis- 
ionaries, nor  as  the  scheme  of  theorists,  nor  as  the  device 
of  legislators,  nor  as  the  compromise  of  interests,  nor  as 
the  trade  of  parties,  but  as  implied  in  the  being  of  the  na- 
tion in  its  necessary  constitution,  and  the  realization  of  its 
being. 

Law,  in  its  political  determination,  has  certain  charac- 
teristics which  are  necessarily  presumed.  There  are,  in 

1  Rome,  through  all  the  successive  periods  in  her  history,  represented  as  the 
source  of  law,  the  "  majestas  populi  Romani,"  and  asserted  as  the  law,  the 
"voluntas  populi  Romani." 

"  The  will  of  the  state,  indicated  in  some  form  of  expression,  is  the  law,  and 
no  natural  rule  which  may  exist  forms  a  part  of  the  law,  unless  identified  with 
the  will  of  the  state  so  indicated.  What  the  state  wills  is  the  coterminous  meas- 
ure of  law;  no  preexisting  rule  is  the  measure  of  that  will."  — Kurd's  Law  of 
Freedom,  etc.  vol.  i.  p.  4. 

"Law  is  the  direct  or  indirect,  explicit  or  implied,  real  or  supposed,  positive 
or  acquiesced  in,  expression  of  the  will  of  human  society  represented  in  the 
state;  or  it  is  the  public  will  of  a  part  of  human  society  constituted  into  a  state." 
—  Liebers  Political  Ethics,  vol.  i.  p.  98. 


138  THE  NATION. 

the  distinction  of  laws  with  reference  to  their  object,  gen- 
eral and  special  laws,  but  there  are  certain  elements  im- 
plied in  all  law  in  the  civil  and  political  order.1 

The  law  presumes  the  being  of  the  moral  person  from 
whom  it  proceeds :  it  presumes  a  consonance  with  reason 
and  justice.  It  cannot  contravene  the  nature  of  things, 
this  would  involve  the  unreason  of  the  state ;  an  incon- 
gruous law  is  inoperative.2 

1  The  definition,  which  is  most  prominent  in  the  history  of  law,  is  that 
which,  after  the  Roman  law,  defines  the  provinces  of  public  law  and  private 
law.  The  distinction  of  these  departments,  as  given  in  the  Digest,  would  serve 
as  the  definition  of  the  nation  and  the  commonwealth,  —  the  political  and  the 
civil  order.  "Hujus  studii  (juris)  duse  sunt  positiones;  publicum  et  privatum. 
Publicum  jus  est  quod  ad  statum  rei  Romanae  spectat;  privatum  quod  ad  singu- 
lorum  utilitatem."  —  Dig.  lib.  1,  tit.  1,  sec.  2.  But  with  the  apprehension  of 
society  only  in  its  civil  relations,  that  is,  as  the  commonwealth,  these  boundaries, 
in  fact  and  then  in  law,  became  obliterated,  and  the  conception  which  underlies 
their  distinction  was  lost:  the  division  has  been  held  by  later  writers  vaguely 
and  again  not  inconsistently  rejected  by  some,  and  its  reason  denied. 

The  Roman  juridical  writers  thus  regarded  public  law,  in  the  imperfect  de- 
velopment of  this  distinction,  as  inclusive  of  criminal  law.  Savigny,  Heut  Rom. 
jRecht.  bk.  i.  ch.  2.  Austin  rejects  the  distinction,  but  his  definition  of  public 
law  is  worth  noting:  "  Public  law,  in  its  strict  and  definite  significance,  is  con- 
fined to  that  portion  of  law  which  is  concerned  with  political  conditions ;  that  is 
to  say,  with  the  powers,  rights,  duties,  capacities,  and  incapacities,  which  are 
peculiar  to  political  superiors,  supreme  and  subordinate."  —  Lectures  on  Juris- 
prudence, vol.  ii.  p.  435.  Mackeldey  describes  the  province  of  each,  "  The 
public  law  comprehends  those  rules  of  law  which  relate  to  the  constitution  and 
government  of  the  state;  consequently  it  concerns  only  the  relations  of  the  peo- 
ple to  the  government.  The  private  law  comprehends  those  rules  which  per- 
tain to  the  juridical  relations  of  citizens  among  themselves."  — Civ.  Law  Comm. 
Introd.  p.  8.  Falck,  as  cited  in  Pomeroy's  Constitutional  Law,  p.  3,  has  defined 
them  with  more  precision.  "  Public  law  embraces  those  precepts  which  im- 
pose duties  or  confer  rights  upon  the  political  superiors  in  the  state,  those  who 
organically  represent  the  state.  Private  law  includes  the  civil  law  proper,  po- 
lice law,  the  law  as  to  crimes  and  punishments,  the  law  as  to  civil  and  criminal 
procedure.  It  embraces  the  rules  which  define  the  rights,  powers,  capacities, 
and  incapacities  of  various  classes  of  persons,  private,  domestic,  or  professional ; 
the  rights  of  property;  the  rights  which  flow  from  contracts  and  obligations  be- 
tween private  persons;  the  description  of  the  delicts  and  offenses  called  crimes; 
the  means  by  which  civil  rights  are  secured  and  enforced;  the  means  proper  to 
maintain  good  morals,  order,  health,  etc.,  in  general  all  those  means  which  aug- 
ment the  convenience  and  promote  the  tranquillity  of  social  life."  —  Courc 
(T  Introduction  Generate  a  V Etude  du  Droit,  ch.  i.  These  citations  indicate  the 
historical  scope  of  the  distinction,  and  in  its  application  to  the  relations  of  the 
political  and  the  civil  order — the  nation  and  the  commonwealth  —  it  has  the  ut- 
most value  for  American  publicists. 
2  "Lex  spectat  naturae  ordinem."  The  law  respecteth  the  order  of  nature. 


Th( 


THE  SOVEREIGNTY  OF  THE  NATION.        139 


e  law  is  personal ;  its  presentation  is  to  persons,  and 
its  obligation  is  imposed  upon  persons.  Its  direct  assertion 
in  its  simplest  expression  is,  —  thou  shalt,  and  thou  shall 
not.  It  takes  every  man  apart  by  himself,  and  appeals  to 
him,  and  evokes  his  responsibility.1 

The  law  has  in  its  conception  a  universal  aim.  It  pre- 
sumes a  principle  of  action  which  is  applied  in  it ;  it  is 
then  set  forth  as  regulative  of  all  action  and  appertaining 
to  all  cases  which  fall  within  this  conception. 

The  law  is  the  definition  of  relations  to  be  maintained 
as  constituent  of  a  moral  order  and  is  regulative  of  them. 
The  law  assumes  the  existence  of  man  in  moral  relations, 
as  of  the  family. 

The  law  has  no  retrospective  action,  it  is  the  on-going 
determination  of  the  organic  will.  There  is  an  injustice 
in  an  ex  post  facto  law  ;  when  one  in  conformance  to  ex- 
isting laws  has  done  his  whole  duty,  and  certain  conse- 
quences have  ensued,  it  would  be  manifestly  wrong  to 
adjudge  him  and  reverse  the  procedure,  because  the  law- 
giver had  changed  his  mind. 

The  law  is  subject  to  amendment,  to  change  or  repeal. 
It  is  not  immutable  ;  it  is  not  stationary,  but  always  pre- 
sumes a  progress  toward  the  more  perfect  attainment  of 
its  end. 

The  law  is  inclusive  of  the  nation  in  its  physical  unity 
and  being,  as  a  whole.  The  nation  is  the  domain  of  law  ; 
the  law  is  of  the  nation,  for  the  nation.  It  is  thus,  in  its 
inclusive  character,  an  authority  over  the  individual  law- 
giver through  whom  it  is  set  forth.  It  is  even  its  own 

"  Lex  non  cogit  ad  impossibilia."  The  law  compels  not  to  the  impossible.  The 
argument  "  ab  impossibile,"  is  valid  in  law.  "  Impossibile  est  quod  naturae 
repugnat."  —  Dig.  lib.  i.  tit.  17. 

"  Law  is  always  in  its  nature  personal,  or  a  law  for  certain  persons."  — 
Kurd's  Law  of  Freedom,  etc.,  vol.  i.  p.  22. 

"  The  law  relates  to  persons  as  its  basis  and  aim,  that  is,  it  has  an  essentially 
personal  character.  All  law  is  throughout  a  law  of  persons.  The  law  necessa- 
rily has  also  reference  to  things,  since  these  Compose  the  physical  conditions 
of  human  development.  But  the  law  in  reference  to  things,  constitutes  only  a 
eubordinate  division  of  the  law  relating  to  persons."  —  Ahren's  Naturrecht,  p.  83. 


140  THE  NATION. 

necessary  interpreter,  and  while  the  private  judgment  of 
the  law-giver  may  be  allowed  as  an  aid  to  ascertain,  it 
cannot  absolutely  determine  its  import ;  the  reference  to 
it,  is  only  private  judgment. 

The  law  is  an  affirmation  ;  it  is  positive.  The  sub- 
jective apprehension  of  right  and  wrong  cannot  assume-, 
the  place  of  an  objective  rule.  Private  opinion  is  not 
to  be  elevated  into  the  position,  nor  invested  with  the 
authority  of  the  nation.1  The  law  itself  is  the  standard 
by  which  the  will  of  the  nation  is  to  be  ascertained.  This 
is  requisite  to  the  necessary  obligation  and  validity  of  law. 
While  the  antithesis  is  superfluous,  the  aphorism  of 
Hobbes  is  valid,  "  authoritas  non  veritas,  facit  legem." 
There  is  in  law  alone  the  formal  assertion  of  the  will  of 
the  nation,  and  through  it  alone  its  will  is  ascertained, 
and  the  private  judgment  of  no  man  can  be  the  authority 
for  another,  nor  control  his  action. 

The  sovereignty  of  the  nation,  in  its  affirmation  in  law,  and 
acting  through  its  normal  powers,  constitutes  the  government. 
The  government  is  the  institution  in  which  the  sovereignty 
of  the  nation  is  realized.  It  is  the  order  in  which  the  will 
of  the  political  people  is  inaugurated  and  established. 

1  This  applies  also  to  the  practice  in  equity,  and  the  procedure  in  it  is  based 
upon  the  assumption  that  k  is  the  will  of  the  nation.  Of  the  application  of  nat- 
ural law  in  jurisprudence,  Mr.  Hurd  says:  — 

"Whatever  rules  or  principles,  tribunals  may  apply  as  law,  they  apply  them  as 
being  the  will  of  the  supreme  authority,  and  as  being  themselves  only  the  instru- 
ments of  that  will. 

"  The  will  of  the  state  is  to  be  ascertained  by  the  tribunal  in  one  of  the  fol- 
lowing methods:  — 

"  First,  direct  and  positive  legislation  is  the  first  and  ruling  indication  of  the 
will  of  the  state,  whether  it  acknowledges  or  refers  to  any  rule  of  natural  origin 
or  not. 

Second,  since  the  will  of  the  state  is  to  be  presumed  to  accord  with  natural 
law,  when  the  positive  legislation  of  the  state  does  not  decide,  the  tribunal  must 
ascertain  the  natural  law  which  is  to  be  enforced  as  the  will  of  the  state.  But 
this  law  can  only  be  determined  by  such  criteria  as  are  supposed  to  be  recog- 
nized by  the  supreme  power  of  the  state,  if  such  criteria  exist ;  and  this  law  when 
so  determined  becomes  identified  in  its  authority  with  positive  law."  —  Kurd's 
Law  of  Freedom,  etc.,  vol.  i.  p.  24. 


THE  SOVEREIGNTY  OF  THE  NATION.        141 

The  government  is  of  the  people  and  it  is  over  the  peo- 
ple. There  is  in  this  no  contradiction,  but  it  is  predicated 
in  the  being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  person.  The  govern- 
ment is  therefore,  in  its  highest  conception,  the  self-gov- 
ernment of  the  people,  —  of  but  over  the  people  in  every 
moment  of  its  action.  It  is  the  will  of  the  people  in  its 
self-determination,  that  is  its  sovereignty  and  its  freedom. 

The  government  is  the  representation  of  the  political 
people  as  a  whole.  It  asserts  the  authority  of  the  whole 
over  the  individual ;  then  only  the  will  of  the  whole  is  law. 

The  government  is  often  described  as  a  government  de 
facto  and  de  jure.  The  former  is  strictly  the  force  which 
at  a  certain  moment  may  get  and  hold  possession  in  the 
state,  without  reference  to  its  origin  or  character,  and  it 
may  maintain  itself  by  foreign  influence  or  by  fraud ;  the 
latter  is  the  power  in  the  state  which  exists  in  conform- 
ance  to  its  organic  law,  although  the  term  is  sometimes 
more  narrowly  applied  to  define  a  government  which  has 
an  antecedent  claim  in  mere  legality.  This  is  strictly 
described  as  a  legitimate  sovereignty  or  government. 

This,  as  the  claim  of  a  pretender,  may  contravene  the 
sovereignty  of  the  people,  that  is  the  nation,  and  that 
government  in  the  higher  sense  is  only  legitimate,  which 
is  the  exponent  of  the  will  of  the  people,  and  in  conform- 
ance  to  its  organic  law.1  The  term  has  been  mainly  con- 
nected with  the  patrimonial  conception  of  the  state. 

If  the  government  is  deficient  in  its  power,  and  its 
authority  is  no  longer  in  the  security  of  rights,  and  of  free- 

1  Bismarck  says  of  these  minor  pretensions  of  sovereignty  in  the  German  nation, 
in  reference  to  their  claims  of  legitimacy,  —  and  it  applies  as  well  to  the  theory  of 
legists  of  separate  sovereignties  here :  "  There  are  many  pedantic  people  who 
want  Prussia  to  protect  the  principle  of  legitimacy.  But  this  principle  of  dy- 
nastic and  conservative  legitimacy  is  a  fiction,  and  that  a  most  pernicious  one. 
Unless  the  conservative  party  renounce  this  principle  we  shall  have  to  go  the 
length  of  applauding  the  hallucinations  of  the  pett}'  potentates,  who  supposing 
they  are  powers,  avail  themselves  of  the  pedestal  of  our  own  might  to  play  at 
kings.  And  yet  all  this  swindle  is  unauthorized  by  the  history  of  the  past,  is 
quite  new,  unhistorical,  and  equally  opposed  to  the  teachings  of  God,  as  to  the 
rights  of  mankind."  —  September  10, 1861. 


142  THE  NATION. 

dom,  it  is  consequent  on  the  decay  of  its  internal  sover- 
eignty, and  while  then  through  certain  changes  its  external 
form  may  remain,  the  ultimate  result  is  the  overthrow  also 
of  its  external  sovereignty.  If  the  domain  of  law  is  not 
maintained,  and  crime  is  left  unpunished,  and  justice  is  not 
executed,  and  everything  falls  into  disorder  in  the  lapse  of 
internal  sovereignty,  there  is  no  basis  for  an  external  sove- 
reignty. It  can  no  longer  claim  recognition  as  a  nation 
by  other  nations  ;  the  self-determination,  the  moral  spirit 
in  the  people  is  gone,  and  the  government  perishes  in  se- 
dition and  crime. 

The  government  cannot  be  imposed  upon  the  nation  by 
any  power  which  is  external  to  it,  nor  can  it  be  inaugu- 
rated by  a  clique,  nor  instituted  by  a  bureau,  nor  by  the 
decree  of  an  individual,  and  in  none  of  these  is  there  the 
assertion  of  the  organic  law.  If  in  some  transition,  when 
the  order  is  interrupted  by  the  violence  of  revolutions,  the 
authority  is  assumed  by  these  powers,  as  in  events  recently 
in  Spain,  it  yet  can  be  only  temporarily,  and  the  ultimate 
reference  must  be  to  the  people. 

The  government  is  the  manifestation  of  the  sovereignty 
of  the  people.  It  rests  on  no  contract.  The  nation  and 
the  government  are  not  two  separate  parties  who  enter 
into  a  joint  agreement.  The  people  ordains  and  establishes 
the  government,  but  does  not  contract  with  it.  The  de- 
scription of  it  as  only  a  party  to  a  joint  agreement  repeats 
the  fiction  of  the  social  contract,  in  which  some  ground 
was  sought  to  establish  the  obligation  of  the  feudal  prince 
to  his  subjects.  When  it  is  applied  to  the  government  of 
the  people,  instead  of  a  constructive  principle,  it  becomes 
a  source  of  division  and  is  inconsistent  with  the  unity  of 
the  people. 

The  government  as  the  representative  of  the  will  of 
the  people  as  a  moral  person,  has  its  strength  in  the 
will.  The  strongest  government  is  that  in  which  there  is 
the  higher  assertion  of  personality,  — that  is,  the  realization 


THE   SOVEREIGNTY   OF   THE  NATION.  143 

of  the  freedom  of  the  people.  In  the  common  phrase  a 
strong  government  is  too  often  identified  with  an  arbitrary 
rule,  which  is  inherently  weak.  The  government  which 
is  without  strength,  lacks  the  constituent  principle  of  gov- 
ernment. It  is  in  its  true  conception  stronger  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  people,  in  the  maintenance  of  law,  the 
institution  of  rights,  the  realization  of  freedom.  For  this 
it  is  clothed  with  power  and  with  majesty  on  the  earth. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE   NATION    AND    ITS    CONSTITUTION. 

THE  constitution  of  the  political  people  has  a  twofold 
character :  there  is  a  real  and  a  formal  constitution.  The 
one  is  the  development  of  the  nation  in  history, —  the 
historical  constitution  ;  the  other  is  the  formula  which  the 
nation  prescribes  for  its  order,  —  the  enacted  constitution  ; 
the  one  is  the  organism  ;  the  other  is  the  form  for  the  or- 
ganization of  the  nation ;  the  one  is  in  identity  with  the 
nation  in  its  organic  being,  it  is  written  only  in  the  law  in 
which  the  members  are  fashioned  ;  the  other  is  the  method 
which  the  nation  establishes  for  its  procedure,  and  the 
order  to  which  the  whole  is  to  conform.1 

1  When  it  is  not  otherwise  mentioned,  the  term  is  used  strictly  of  the  constitu- 
tion in  its  formal  character,  the  constitution  as  a  legal  instrument,  and  the  in- 
stitute of  the  government. 

"  The  written  constitution  is  simply  a  law  ordained  by  the  nation  or  the  peo- 
ple instituting  and  organizing  the  government.  The  unwritten  constitution  is 
the  real  or  actual  constitution  of  the  people  as  a  state  or  as  a  sovereign  commu- 
nity and  constituting  them  such  or  such  a  state.  It  is  providential,  not  made 
by  the  nation  but  born  with  it.  The  written  constitution  is  made  and  ordained 
by  the  sovereign  power  and  presupposes  that  power  as  already  existing  and 
constituted."  —  Brownson's  American  Republic,  p.  218.  See  Kurd's  Law  of 
Freedom,  etc.,  vol.  i.  p.  296.  Jamison's  Constitutional  Convention,  p.  67. 

"  The  more  we  examine  the  influence  of  human  agency  in  the  formation  of 
constitutions,  the  greater  will  be  our  conviction  that  it  enters  only  in  a  manner 
infinitely  subordinate,  or  as  a  simple  instrument,  and  I  do  not  believe  there 
remains  the  least  doubt  of  the  truth  of  the  following  propositions:  — 

"1.  That  the  fundamental  principles  of  political  constitutions  exist  before 
all  written  law. 

"  2.  That  constitutional  law  is,  and  can  only  be,  the  development  or  sanction 
of  an  unwritten  preexisting  right. 

"  3.  That  which  is  most  essential,  most  intrinsica!!}'  constitutional  and  funda- 
mental, is  never  written  and  could  not  be  without  endangering  the  state. 

"4.  That  the  weakness  and  fragility  of  a  constitution  are  in  direct  proportion) 
to  the  multiplicity  of  written  constitutional  articles."  —  De  Maistre,  On  the 
Generative  Principle  of  Political  Constitutions,  Boston,  1847. 

The  comparative  value  of  a  written  constitution  has  been  the  subject  of  wide! 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  CONSTITUTION.  145 

The  sovereignty  of  the  nation  has  its  first  formal  ex- 
pression in  the  convention.  The  convention  represents 
the  constructive  power  and  intendment  of  the  people  in 
the  formation  of  its  constitution.  It  is  the  assertion  of  the 
will  of  the  people  in  the  ordination  and  institution  of  its 
government.  The  power  existent  in  it  is  not  then  with- 
drawn, but  as  has  been  truly  said,  the  convention  persists 
in  the  constitution  and  never  expires.  It  is  the  people 
forming  the  nation  that  ordains  and  establishes  the  consti- 
tution, and  acts  in  and  through  it. 

The  nation  is  before  the  constitution.  It  precedes  and 
enacts  the  constitution  as  the  determinate  form  of  its  polit- 
ical life ;  it  establishes  the  constitution  as  the  order  in  which 
it  will  realize  its  determination. 

The  constitution,  which  defines  the  formal  organization 
of  the  nation,  is  the  law  which  is  regulative  of  its  normal 
action,  and  then  also  of  the  institutions  which  are  its 
normal  powers.  The  law  is  the  formula  of  its  process, 
the  institutions  are  the  structure  of  its  process.  The 
law  and  institutions,  in  their  positive  character,  become 
the  firm  support  of  order,  and  the  muniments  of  free- 
dom. They  are  established,  and  in  them  the  people  rec- 
ognizes its  own  stability.  The  constitution  stands  as  the 
continuous  expression  of  the  sovereignty,  the  freedom, 
and  the  rights  of  the  people.  It  has  the  authority  of  law, 
and  there  is  the  defense  of  the  whole  from  arbitrary  ac- 
tion ;  it  has  the  stability  of  institutions,  and  there  is  the 
defense  of  the  whole  from  individual  action.  It  is  con- 
structive of  the  course  of  the  people  in  its  entirety,  and 
in  the  constitution  in  its  true  significance,  "  we  stand  alto- 
gether, and  we  march  altogether."  It  is  the  impregnable 
barrier  against  the  assault  of  a  mere  individualism,  and 

discussion,  but,  if  the  proper  limitation  of  a  constitution  be  regarded,  as  simply 
the  definition  of  the  order  of  the  nation,  and  if  it  does  not  assume  the  functions 
of  the  legislative  power,  the  argument  for  it  may  be  justified,  and  at  least  has 
the  higher  historical  support. 
10 


146  THE   NATION. 

the  stable  basis  of  the  whole  against  the  strife  of  factional, 
and  the  pretension  of  provincial  supremacy.  It  remains 
while  parties  rise  and  disappear,  and  while  systems  change, 
as  the  constitution  of  the  whole,  stable  in  the  power  and 
supreme  in  the  majesty  of  the  people. 

The  constitution,  as  established  by  the  will  of  the 
people,  is  of  the  nature  and  authority  of  law,  and  in  its 
necessary  process  is  the  supreme  law  of  the  land.  As 
law  it  is  the  assertion  of  the  will  of  the  people,  and 
yet  it  is  over  the  people,  and  obedience  is  to  be  ren 
dered  to  it.  It  is  instituted  in  the  self  government  of  the 
people.  It  has  therefore,  as  the  law  which  is  the  expres- 
sion of  the  moral  being  in  the  nation,  the  sacredness  of 
law.  But  this  sacredness  is  derivative  from  its  content. 
There  can  be  no  sacredness  attaching  to  the  abstract  form, 
and  neither  devotion  nor  sacrifice  for  the  constitution  when 
it  is  regarded  only  as  an  abstract  formula ;  it  is  sacred  only 
in  so  far  as  it  is  affirmative  of  the  law  which  is  implicit  in 
the  nation,  or  as  the  life  of  the  nation  may  be  affected  in 
its  maintenance. 

The  constitution  is  to  have  the  style  and  language  of  an 
instrument  of  law ;  it  has  the  intendment  of  positive 
law.  It  is  ordained  of  the  people  as  the  law  of  the  land, 
the  will  of  the  whole  people,  and  the  authority  over  the 
whole  land.  It  is  not  in  its  scope,  since  it  is  an  instru- 
ment of  law,  to  present  any  theory  or  speculative  notion 
of  the  origin  and  substance  of  the  nation.  The  presenta- 
tion of  any  theory  is  superfluous,  in  the  presence  of  the 
being  and  sovereignty  of  the  nation  itself. 

The  constitution  defines  the  formal  organization  of  the 
normal  powers  of  the  government.  But  while  these  pow- 
ers are  established  in  conformance  to  the  constitution,  it  is 
not  to  be  so  construed  as  to  become  the  substitute  for  their 
normal  operations.  The  distinction  between  the  conven- 
tion and  the  congress,  the  constitution  and  the  laws,  is 
fundamental ;  the  one  is  the  definition  and  construction  of 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  CONSTITUTION.       147 

these  powers,  the  other  is  their  action  in  the  condition  and 
circumstance  of  the  people. 

The  nation  forms  the  constitution,  in  its  own  conscious 
determination.  It  is  not  a  necessary  physical  sequence, 
as  if  the  product  of  physical  causes ;  it  is  not  the  result 
of  aimless  forces ;  it  does  not  come  into  existence  apart 
from  the  conscious  thought  and  action  of  the  people,  as 
if  it  were  to  be  had  without  effort,  and  sustained  without 
vigilance,  or  as  if  it  were  to  be  held  in  a  superstitious  rev- 
erence. It  is  not  attained  without  thought ;  it  does  not 
increase  as  the  trees  in  the  wood.  It  is  not  formed,  and  it 
cannot  be  sustained  in  the  lethargy  and  passivity  of  the 
people.  It  is  the  assertion  of  the  will  of  the  people,  and  it 
subsists  in  the  conscious  and  continuous  determination  of 
its  will.  It  consists  in  an  ethical  and  not  a  physical  organ- 
ism, and  proceeds  from,  as  it  is  maintained  by,  the  sove- 
reignty which  exists  in  a  conscious  freedom. 

The  nation  is  to  realize  in  the  constitution  the  determina- 
tion of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people.  It  is  not  to  be 
formed  in  the  working  of  some  sect  or  party.  It  is  not 
to  express  the  intent  only  of  certain  individuals ;  and 
while  in  isolated  individuals  there  may  be  the  longing  for 
a  better  constitution,  it  must  pervade  the  whole  and  be- 
come a  common  conviction  before  it  can  be  realized.  The 
constitution  thus  also  in  its  completeness,  cannot  be  the 
work  of  a  single  generation  or  separate  age ;  it  can  be 
promulgated  on  the  adjournment  of  no  convention,  as 
ample  to  embrace  all  events  and  all  times.  This  is  the 
oriental  conception,  and  could  result  only  in  Chinese  sta- 
bility, not  national  permanence.  It  cannot  consist  with 
the  existence  of  the  people  as  a  living  power,  and  civiliza- 
tion as  a  living  principle.  It  belongs  to  oriental  immo- 
bility, not  occidental  spirit. 

The  nation  is  to  apprehend  in  the  constitution  its  object 
and  aim.  The  formal  constitution  must  correspond  to  the 
real.  It  is  the  order  in  which  the  people  are  to  act,  and 


148  THE  NATION. 

the  people  must  find  therefore  in  the  constitution  the 
expression  of  its  spirit,  and  its  purpose  must  not  be  fet- 
tered nor  perverted  by  it ;  but  it  must  be  able  to  act 
in  and  through  it  with  entire  freedom,  in  the  furtherance 
of  its  aim.  There  must  be  reflected  in  it  its  own  spirit, 
and  in  so  far  as  it  fails  of  this  it  has  elements  of  weakness 
or  of  peril.  The  life  of  the  people  cannot  be  sacrificed  for  a 
political  form,  or  a  political  dogma.  The  nation  is  not  to 
perish  that  a  political  theory  or  a  political  abstraction  may 
strive  vainly  for  realization.  There  is  thus  danger  if  some 
conception  which  belongs  only  to  the  past  is  adhered  to, 
and  none  the  less,  if  some  which  is  too  far  in  advance  is 
insisted  upon.  The  value  of  the  constitution  is  relative  as 
well  as  positive.  Napoleon  I.  gave  to  Spain  a  constitution 
which  was  abstractly  better  than  she  had  before ;  but  it 
worked  badly,  for  it  was  not  adapted  to  the  people,  and 
they  held  it  as  something  strange  and  alien.  In  modern 
English  politics  there  are  the  most  frequent  illustrations 
of  the  neglect  of  this  principle.  They  have  furnished  con- 
stitutions ready  made  for  all  communities.  They  are  the 
same  empty  and  stereotyped  form,  and  struck  in  the  same 
mould,  and  with  the  same  trade  stamp.  The  spirit  of  all 
peoples  is  to  find  embodiment  in  Anglican  forms  and 
institutions,  and  to  realize  an  Anglican  freedom.  England, 
which  never  has  apprehended  the  spirit  of  another  people, 
and  holds  forms  as  immutable  when  of  her  own  cast,  has 
always  had  those  which  she  regarded  as  the  only  hope 
of  other  countries.  In  the  organization  of  society  in 
India,  the  native  farmers  of  the  revenue,  as  the  best  ma- 
terial to  be  had,  were  taken  by  force  to  be  made  into 
squires.  It  was  necessary  to  society  that  there  should  be 
squires,  and  that  they  should  be  of  the  Anglican  type.  In 
the  last  century  an  English  minister  proposed  a  plan  for 
the  introduction  of  the  whole  feudal  system  into  St.  Johns  ; 
in  this  century  the  Dominion  of  Canada  has  been  designed 
in  the  same  device.  The  constitution  is  to  be  the  exponent 


THE  NATION  AND   ITS   CONSTITUTION.  149 

of  the  will  and  spirit  of  the  people,  and  that  which  is  over 
it,  but  is  not  of  it,  or  no  longer  of  it,  has  elements  of 
weakness  or  of  tyranny.  It  is  the  weakness  of  an  empty 
form,  or  the  hard  tyranny  of  an  abstraction  or  system,  and 
repressing  but  hot  expressing  the  spirit  of  the  people,  it 
crushes  its  energies  and  consumes  its  freedom. 

The  neglect  of  the  distinction  between  the  real  and  the 
formal  constitution  and  the  consequent  identification  of  the 
nation  with  its  formal  organization,  becomes  the  most  dan- 
gerous of  political  falsehoods.  The  nation  not  only  is 
before  the  formal  constitution,  but  the  events  in  its  history, 
which  it  holds  in  highest  honor,  may  be  precedent  to  it ; 
as  the  war  of  the  Revolution  was  fought  and  brought  to 
its  close  before  the  adoption  of  the  existent  formal  consti- 
tution. 

The  nation  continues  in  its  identity,  while  constitutions 
are  changed  or  abolished.  Rome  was  the  same  under  her 

o 

kings  and  under  her  consuls.  France  is  the  same  through 
all  her  revolutions,  and  under  her  feudal  and  republican 
and  imperial  organizations.  The  nation,  in  her  formal  con- 
stitution, has  not  always  even  the  indication  of  her  real 
condition,  but  under  the  same  constitution  may  advance 
or  decline.  The  constitution  has,  in  itself,  no  inherent 
power  and  no  abstract  virtue  to  deliver  the  people.  It  is 
not  for  the  individual  nor  for  the  nation  to  be  saved  by 
any  system,  however  complex,  nor  any  dogma,  however 
subtle.  The  constitution  may  become  itself  only  the 
mask  which  hides  from  an  age  its  degeneracy,  or  the 
mausoleum  which  conceals  its  decay.  The  pedantry  of 
systems  may  be  made  the  substitute  for  living  forces. 
The  nation  is  not  comprehended  in  its  formal  organization. 
There  is  a  political  truth  in  the  rude  verse  •  of  a  poet  of 
the  Republican  Age  in  England :  — 

"  Let  not  your  king  and  parliament  in  one, 
Much  less  apart,  mistake  themselves  for  that 
Which  is  most  worthy  to  be  thought  upon ; 


150  THE  NATION. 

Nor  think  they  are  essentially  the  state. 

Let  them  not  fancy  that  the  authority 

And  privileges  on  them  bestowed, 

Conferred  are,  to  set  up  a  majesty, 

Or  a  power  or  a  glory  of  their  own ; 

But  let  them  know  it  was  for  a  deeper  life, 

Which  they  but  represent ; 

That  there1  s  on  earth  a  yet  auguster  thing, 

Veiled  though  it  be,  than  parliament  or  king." 

The  nation  may  amend  or  alter  the  constitution  which 
it  has  formed.  The  course  of  history  in  which  the  nation 
stands  is  a  development ;  and  there  is  to  be  in  it  always 
the  better  institution  of  rights,  and  the  broader  domain  of 
freedom,  and  these  are  to  have  their  assertion  in  the  con- 
stitution. The  constitution  must  be  open  to  recognize  the 
advance  in  each  age,  since  in  each  the  work  of  the  people 
is  to  be  carried  on  under  the  changed  conditions  of  an  his- 
torical life.  Neither  the  individual  nor  the  nation  can  in 
any  moment  regard  its  course  and  order  as  perfect ;  and, 
with  entire  subjection  to  the  constitution,  there  must 
be  in  it  always  the  expression  of  an  higher  historical 
development.  It  is  here  that  the  relation  of  the  per- 
manent and  the  progressive  element  in  the  organization  of 
society  becomes  apparent;  the  one  involves  the  other, 
and  is  even  its  condition.  The  new  is  to  be  built  in  the 
old.  It  is  not  to  be  the  isolation  from  the  old ;  but  it  is 
wrought  out  of  the  old  into  the  new.  The  change  which 
comes  is  to  be  ingrooved  in  that  wliich  flies.  The  reten- 
tion of  all  that  is  good  in  the  past  is  to  be  held  as  no  hin- 

o  Jr 

drance  to  advance,  but  its  precedent.  There  is  to  be  no 
divergence  from  the  old,  as  if  it  were  necessary  to  take 
from  the  outset  a  new  start.  The  wise  change  is  not  in 
the  weak  conceit  of  the  ability  to  construct  out  of  one's 
own  political  materials  the  best  constitution,  but  with  care- 
fulness, lest,  from  the  acquisition  of  the  past,  anything  of 
worth  shall  be  allowed  to  perish.  While  Rome  has 
bequeathed  to  the  world  the  universal  terms  of  law, — 
and  her  civil  law  has  become  an  institute  in  history  of  the 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS   CONSTITUTION.  151 

world's  civilization,  —  she  yet  held,  in  undying  deference, 
the  tables  on  which  her  first  law  was  written.  There 
must  he  thus  always  in  the  constitution  itself  forms  to 
enable  its  amendment,  and,  while  it  is  open  to  no  sudden  • 
change  in  the  momentary  action  of  the  people,  it  is  not  to 
prevent  the  freedom  of  the  people.  It  is  to  assert  the  con- 
tinuous will  of  the  nation  in  its  organic  continuity,  and  it 
must,  therefore,  possess  permanence.  It  is  to  be  open  to 
the  expression  of  progress,  also,  for  it  is  to  be  the  institute 
of  freedom  and  of  rights.1 

If  there  be  in  the  constitution  no  provision  whereby  the 
political  people  in  its  normal  action  can  effect  an  amend- 
ment, or  if  the  mode  provided  be  such  as  to  obstruct  its 
action,  there  yet  subsists  in  the  people  the  right  of  reform  ; 
and  if,  while  yet  there  is  no  way  open  to  it  or  only  some 
inaccessible  way  is  indicated,  the  hope  of  reform  shall  fail, 
and  the  constitution  and  the  government  which  is  instituted 
in  it  be  wrested  from  their  foundation  in  the  consent  of  the 
organic  will,  there  is  then,  at  last,  the  right  of  revolution. 
This,  in  the  supreme  peril,  is  the  supreme  necessity  of  the 
people.  If  the  people  no  longer  finds  the  correspondence 
to  its  aim  in  the  constitution  which  it  has  once  established, 
if  its  advance  is  thwarted  and  it  is  being  deflected  from  its 
course,  and  its  life  is  being  deformed,  although  under  the 
form  it  once  enacted  and  alone  has  the  right  to  enact ; 
if  the  government  becomes  thus  subversive  of  its  ends, 
and  the  future  holds  no  hope  of  a  reform  which  may  effect 
those  ends,  then  revolution  is  a  right.  This  maintenance 

1  President  Washington,  in  his  farewell  to  the  people,  which,  in  its  political 
wisdom  has,  in  modern  political  literature,  no  parallel,  asserts,  as  a  fundamental  / 
right,  "  the  right  of  the  people  to  make  and  to  alter  their  constitutions  of  gov-  / 
ernment;"  but,  since  the  constitution  has  the  form  of  law,  the  mode  of  amend- 
ment which  it  provides  may  be  so  intricate  or  so  difficult,  as  to  so  restrict  the 
action  of  the  people,  that  this  fundamental  right  shall  be  more  effectually 
irrested  from  them,  than  by  the  most  consummate  tyranny. 

"  A  constitution  which  has  no  place  for  amendment  is  absolutely  immoral, 
for  it  sets  itself  forth  as  absolutely  perfect ;  it  is  far  more  immoral  than  the 
anlimited  power  of  the  monarch."  —  Schleiermacher,  Ckrislliclie  Sitte,  p.  270. 


152  THE  NATION. 

of  the  continuous  life  and  continuous  development  of  ilio 
nation,  against  that  which  is  hindering  its  growth,  or  sap- 
ping its  energy,  is  not  strictly  a  revolution.  It  is  rather 
the  reverse,  since  there  is  in  it  the  maintenance  of  the 
organic  being  of  the  nation  and  it  is  in  conformance  to 
the  organic  law.  It  is  not  anarchic,  for  it  is  the  only  possi- 
ble pursuance  of  the  order  of  the  nation,  and  its  vindication 
from  the  false  order  which  is  interrupting  it.  It  is  the  spirit 
of  the  people  in  its  real  strength  which  breaks  through 
the  system  by  which  it  is  gyved.  But  it  is  only  to  be 
justified  in  the  supreme  necessity  of  the  nation,  and  as 
itself  the  act  of  the  nation  as  an  whole,  the  work  of  the 
political  people.  It  is  not  to  be  the  act  of  a  part  only,  as  a 
section  or  faction.  The  development  is  only  of  the  nation 
as  an  organic  whole,  and  conditional  in  its  organic  unity, 
and  it  is  this  alone  that  is  thwarted  or  imperilled,  and  in 
this  alone  the  right  subsists.  Thus  a  revolution  is  not  an 
insurrection,  since  the  one  presumes  the  action  of  the 
people  as  an  organic  whole,  and  is  justified  in  proceeding 
from  the  people,  whose  determination  is  law  ;  the  other  is 
the  act  of  individuals,  a  section  or  a  faction,  in  revolt  from 
the  will  of  the  whole.1 

The  revolution  which  is  thus  a  necessity  is  not  the  dis- 
cord, but  it  is  more  strictly  the  concord  of  the  nation,  and 
when  thus  a  necessity,  the  order  which  is  set  aside  will  be 

1  "  The  moral  condition  of  a  revolution  is  that  it  express  the  conviction  of 
the  common  people  and  the  common  will."  —  Fichte,  Naturrechte,  p.  238. 

"  The  right  of  revolution  must  be  grounde4  in  the  living  conviction  of  the 
whole."  — Schleiermacher,  Ghristliche  Sitte,  p.  265. 

"  Regarded  abstractly,  revolutions  are  always  moral  anomalies;  but  actually 
they  are  to  be  regarded  as  unavoidable  and  therefore  only  apparently  moral 
anomalies.  For  in  human  history,  through  the  power  of  sin,  the  development 
cannot  continue  to  proceed  in  a  continuous  sequence,  but  only  through  many 
throes  and  crises.  The  revolution  which  is  really  the  work  of  the  nation  itself, 
can  only  be  regarded  as  such  a  crisis,  which,  through  external  impediments, 
becomes  the  condition  of  the  maintenance  of  the  moral  life  of  the  nation;  and 
such  a  revolution  therefore  can  only  be  justified  when  it  rests  on  the  living  con- 
viction of  the  people  in  its  totality." — Rothe,  Theologische  EtJrik,  vol.  iii. 
sec.  2,  p.  984. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS   CONSTITUTION.  153 

succeeded  immediately  by  the  real  order  of  the  nation,  in 
its  new  form,  with  the  return  of  the  energy  of  the  people, 
and  its  ampler  freedom.  It  is  not  therefore  of  any  to 
glorify  revolution,  which  can  appear  only  in  a  disturbed 
order  ;  but  when  in  the  mystery  of  evil,  the  energy  of  the 
people  is  impaired  and  its  life  withering,  although  its  path 
can  be  only  through  violent  struggle,  it  is  yet  to  rejoice  in 
the  power  which  may  resist  and  overcome  the  evil.  It  is 
thus  that  epochs  of  national  revolution  have  been  those  not 
of  despair,  but  of  hope  and  exultation,  and  there  has 
been  in  them,  as  there  is  not  in  the  triumph  of  parties  or 
factions,  the  renewal  of  the  strength  and  spirit  of  the 
people. 

The  nation  thus  may  be  the  stronger  in  the  crisis  in 
which  its  constitution  is  swept  away,  and  there  may  be  in 
it  the  evidence  of  a  power  which  opposing  evils  could  not 
wholly  destroy.  It  is  the  life  which  could  not  be  utterly 
crushed,  and  the  strength  which  could  not  be  entirely  con- 
sumed by  fetters  forged  through  lapse  of  time,  in  which 
privileges  assumed  to  be  alone  the  precedents  of  action, 
and  were  girt  by  legal  forms  and  devices,  until  they  barred 
out  the  rights  of  men.  The  transition  from  the  feudal 
constitutions  of  Germany,  has  been  in  every  crisis  the 
development  in  its  higher  unity  of  a  national  life.  The 
age  of  the  commonwealth,  when  the  same  result  in  part 
was  effected  in  England,  was  the  last  great  age  in  her 
history.  The  French  Revolution  bore  throughout  the 
deepest  devotion  to  the  nation,  and  in  its  tumultuous 
changes  no  voice  was  lifted  against  the  -unity  and  glory  of 
France.  The  American  Revolution  was  the  act  of  the 
political  people  of  the  whole  land,  in  the  endeavor  toward 
the  realization  of  the  nation.  These  crises  were  in  the 
development  of  national  life,  and  the  constitution  displaced 
was  foreign  to  the  political  people. 

The  constitution  is  primarily  to  define  the  structure  and 
the  mode  of  action  of  the  normal  powers  in  the  nation. 


154  THE  NATION. 

It  is  the  enumeration  and  the  limitation  of  these  powers, 
and  is  then  simply  the  norm  of  their  action.  It  is  to  reg- 
ulate the  form,  but  it  is  not  to  specify  the  content  in  their 
action.  It  is  to  prescribe  the  organization  of  the  nation, 
and  not  that  which  shall  be  in  the  action  of  the  organs. 
It  is  as  the  chart  of  a  ship,  and  the  order  of  its  company ; 
but  it  knows  not  the  voyage  it  shall  make,  nor  the  storm 
nor  mutiny  it  may  encounter,  nor  those  whom  it  shall 
carry,  nor  the  seas  it  shall  sail. 

The  prescription  of  the  action  of  the  people  in  all 
events  and  circumstances,  is  not  in  the  scope  of  the  con- 
stitution, and  it  would  not  be  possible.  It  is  not  requi- 
site to  its  stability,  nor  to  the  firm  order  of  the  gov- 
ernment; but  in  the  effort  of  the  past  to  control  the 
future  it  would  induce  elements  of  conflict  which  would 
impair  the  whole.  The  constitution  which  sought  to 
predetermine  the  future,  and  to  forestall  the  conduct  of 
affairs  in  the  infinite  change  of  time  and  circumstance, 
would  presume  that  a  people  was  already  beyond  the  con- 
ditions of  history.  If  the  people  possessed  a  living  energy, 
and  was  not  itself  as  dead  as  the  past,  the  object,  if  at- 
tempted, would  be  as  vain  as  the  insistance  that  men  in  a 
real  battle  should  listen,  for  the  word  of  command,  only  to 
the  echoes  of  the  voices  of  commanders  on  some  battle- 
field of  the  past,  whose  banners  are  folded,  and  from  wrhich 
the  ranks  have  long  since  marched  away.  It  would  be, 
against  the  inevitable  current  of  events,  which  still  would 
sweep  on  resistless  as  time,  the  building  of  "  parchment 
tmrriers,"  and  in  the  real  crises  they  would  be  thrown 
aside,  as  the  impediment  in  the  path  of  a  free  people  in  its 
necessary  course. 

To  attempt  to  make  the  constitution  the  formula  which 
not  only  shall  define  the  order  of  the  people  but  mould 
the  events  in  its  history,  to  make  it  determinative  of  the 
course  of  the  people  in  these  events  as  they  arise,  to  make 
it  the  substitute  for  the  process  of  laws  and  statutes  which 


THE  NATION  AND   ITS   CONSTITUTION.  155 


ome  in  their  immediate  enactment  the  embodiment  of 
a  living  will,  is  itself  possible,  only  as  the  nation  is  no 
longer  a  living  power,  and  has  no  longer  a  living  will.  The 
constitution  which  the  convention  has  formed,  and  which 
has  been  adopted,  is  in  its  nature  the  supreme  law,  but 
in  its  own  provision,  to  make  its  amendment  difficult  or 
well-nigh  impossible,  and  then  to  assume  that  it  shall  be 
exclusively  and  exhaustively  definitive  of  the  action  of  the 
people  in  all  events,  involves  the  denial  of  the  organic  and 
moral  being  of  the  people.  It  is  directly  immoral,  since  in 
its  necessary  inference  the  people  no  longer  exists  as  a 
power  in  the  moral  order  which  is  the  life  of  history.  It 
does  not  honor  the  past,  nor  is  it  joined  with  it  in  liv- 
ing relations.  Thus  in  the  strict  historical  school  there 
is  always  a  regretfulness,  as  that  the  convention  of  1787 
should  have  adjourned,  and  that  there  is  now  no  Hamilton 
and  no  Madison ;  but  this  deference  does  not  honor  them. 
We  may  only  know  of  them  that  they  had  the  strength 
to  do,  knowing  that  things  were  to  be  done,  and  that  their 
strength  was  as  their  days.  Of  this  spirit,  which  may  become 
a  weak  superstition,  the  age  has  to  learn,  in  the  words  of 
another,  that  the  bones  of  the  giants  of  old  have  been 
found  and  they  measure  no  more  than  ours.  This  concep- 
tion enslaves  the  present  to  the  past  instead  of  emanci- 
pating it  with  the  past.  It  is  the  worst  tyranny  of  time,  or 
rather  the  very  tyranny  of  time.  It  makes  an  earthly 
providence  of  a  convention  which  has  adjourned  without 
day.  It  places  the  sceptre  over  a  free  people  in  the  hands 
of  dead  men,  and  the  only  office  left  to  the  people  is  to 
build  thrones  out  of  the  stones  of  their  sepulchres.  The 
spirit  is  immured  in  the  walls  it  has  built.  It  is  in  politics 
the  thought  which  in  history  had  its  expression  in  Egypt. 
It  is  said  by  Hegel,  that  as  it  is  reflected  in  her  monu- 
ments, the  Egyptian  was  in  love  with  death,  and  thus 
there  was  always  a  skeleton  at  the  banquet,  but  this  places 
the  same  image  not  only  in  the  assembly  of  the  people, 


156  THE  NATION. 

but  in  the  power  of  the  majority  in  it.  It  elevates  the 
past  to  a  throne  over  the  present,  of  irreversible  de- 
crees.1 

The  constitution  determines  the  order,  but  it  cannot 
predicate  the  course  and  destination  of  the  people.  It  is 
not  providence,  nor  destiny.  The  years  and  what  they 
bring,  are  withdrawn  from  the  gaze  of  conventions  as  well 
as  of  men.  They  have  no  more  a  horoscope  to  forecast 
the  future  in  the  lives  of  nations  than  of  individuals,  nor 
can  they  outmaster  time,  nor  wrest  the  secret  from  the 
years.  The  constitution  is  to  provide  that  the  people  shall 
stand  together,  and  march  together,  but  their  line  of  march 
is  hidden  from  it.  The  nation  is  formed  in  the  changing 
conditions  of  history.  It  must  pass  through  conflicts 
which  the  prescience  of  no  assembly  can  anticipate,  and 
they  will  not  regulate  their  coming  by  the  action  of  any 
convention,  nor  conform  to  its  project,  nor  abide  in  its 
provision.  The  aim  of  the  constitution  is  to  leave  each 
generation  free  to  do  its  own  work  to  which  it  is  called, 
but  in  the  continuity  of  the  nation,  and  in  its  normal  pro- 
cess, and  therein,  it  becomes  the  assertion  of  the  unity  of 
law,  with  the  realization  of  the  freedom  of  the  nation  in  its 
being  in  history. 

The  constitution,  when  it  transcends  its  province,  and, 
from  the  enumeration  of  powers  and  the  exposition  of 
rights  proceeds  to  the  specification  of  their  content  in 
the  immediate  direction  and  adjustment  of  events,  becomes 
imbedded  in  political  theories,  which  are  introduced  to  sup- 
plement its  literal  articles,  or  encumbered  with  minute 
detail.  Since  it  is  in  its  form  a  positive  law,  it  becomes, 
then,  through  judicial  interpretation,  complicated  with  pre- 
cedents and  opinions,  and  is  tortured  by  judicial  decisions, 
until,  instead  of  representing  the  will  or  the  freedom  of 

1 "  Whosoever  will  have  a  government  that  cannot  follow  its  living  conviction, 
gets  the  dead  over  the  living,  and  denies  the  moral  development  of  the  state."  — 
Schleiermacher,  Christliche  Sitte,  p.  273. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  CONSTITUTION.  157 

the  people,  it  is  only  the  field  ground  for  lawyers;  the 
people  no  longer  recognize  their  aim  nor  their  stability 
in  it,  •and  its  intricate  and  complex  character  tends  to 
produce  ignorance  of,  and  then  indifference  to  it. 

The  constitution  has  a  positive  and  a  relative  value. 
It  has  the  elements  of  a  universal  as  well  as  an  individual 
character,  since  the  nation  has  a  universal  aim  as  it  has 
an  individual  life.  In  the  critical  study  of  a  consti- 
tution its  comparative  advantages  are  therefore  to  be 
regarded,  and  there  is  to  be  applied  to  it  a  common  as  well 
as  special  estimate.  There  is  thus  a  high  value  in  the 
comparative  study  of  the  constitutions  of  nations. 

The  constitution  is  to  become  in  the  progress  of  the  peo- 
ple the  institution  of  an  ampler  freedom,  and  a  more  perfect 
organization  of  rights.  As  the  sovereignty  of  the  people 
attains  a  more  determinate  expression  in  it,  that  which  is 
vague  and  incomplete,  or  inconsistent  and  incongruous,  is 
set  aside.  The  arbitrary  can  find  in  its  vagueness  only 
the  cloak  for  tyranny,  and  the  treacherous  the  mask  for 
secession  and  anarchy.  Its  language  is,  therefore,  to  be 
plain,  to  express  the  purpose  of  the  people.  It  is  in  its 
high  conception,  the  evidence  of  the  stability  and  the 
instrument  of  the  freedom  and  the  assertion  of  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  people,  in  whose  will  it  is  ordained  and 
established. 

The  more  perfect  constitution  is  always  to  be  the  aim  of 
the  whole  as  it  is  the  indication  of  its  advance.  But  the 
formal  constitution  is  not  to  be  an  end  in  itself,  and  its 
worth  is  derivative  only  from  the  life  it  conserves.  To 
reverence  it  for  its  own  sake,  may  create  a  spirit  not  of 
law  but  of  mere  legality.  The  superstitions  of  lawyers  are 
more  perilous  than  the  superstitions  of  priests.  It  is  the 
adherence  to  a  political  formtda,  to  which  it  attaches  a 
separate  sanctity,  and  refuses  all  change,  while  its  spirit 
is  wasting  and  decaying.  It  holds  the  form  above  the 
life  and  being  of  the  nation  which  it  was  instituted  to 


158  THE  NATION. 

maintaiii.  There  is  here  the  contrast  of  a  righteous  and  an 
evil  conservatism ;  the  true  conservatism  aims  at  the  main- 
tenance of  the  being  and  the  unity  of  the  nation,  although 
the  form  be  changed  or  destroyed;  but  there  is  a  false 
conservatism,  —  there  are  those  who,  in  their  regard  for 
the  constitution  of  the  nation,  deny  the  nation  itself.1  They 
would  sacrifice  the  nation  to  maintain  the  constitution. 
They  hold  the  constitution  as  something  above  and  sepa- 
rate from  the  people,  to  be  looked  upon  with  another  rev- 
erence. They  place  the  symbol  above  the  reality,  and 
adhere  with  a  blind  attachment  to  the  letter,  when  it  is 
dead  to  the  spirit.  It  is  at  last  the  conservatism  of  a  polit- 
ical hypocrisy.  It  is  the  conservatism  of  the  scribes  and 
pharisees  and  lawyers ;  but  they  neither  knew  nor  cared 
for  the  calling  of  the  ancient  nation.  It  is  busy  reading 
the  inscriptions  and  repeating  the  legends  upon  the  stones, 
while  the  fires  upon  the  altar  are  dying,  and  it  will  build 
and  adorn  the  sepulchres  of  the  prophets,  while  the  great 
Prophet  of  humanity  stands  unheeded  in  the  streets  of  its 
Capital. 

l  "  Conservatism  consists  not  in  that  the  old  form  be  retained,  but  that  the 
substance  be  maintained."  —  Stahl,  Philosophie  des  Rechts,  vol.'ii.  sec.  2,  p.  200. 

"  Conservatism,  when  it  rightly  understands  itself,  will  in  no  way  hold  on  to 
the  exact  form  of  the  state  as  hitherto  existent;  but  will  hold  fast  the  preser- 
vation of  the  state  itself,  under  the  development  of  its  form."  —  Kothe,  Theolo- 
gische  JEthik,  vol.  iii.  sec.  2,  p.  995. 

"  We  have  heard  of  the  impious  doctrine  in  the  old  world,  that  the  people 
were  made  for  kings,  not  kings  for  the  people.  Is  the  same  doctrine  to  be 
received  in  another  shape  in  the  new,  that  the  solid  happiness  of  the  people  is  to 
be  sacrificed  to  the  views  of  political  institutions  of  another  form  ?  It  is  too  early 
for  politicians  to  presume  on  our  forgetting  that  the  public  good,  the  real  welfare 
of  the  great  body  of  the  people,  is  the  supreme  object  to  be  pursued;  and  that 
no  form  of  government  whatever  has  any  other  value  than  as  it  may  be  fitted  for 
the  attainment  of  this  object."  —  President  Madison,  The  Federalist,  No.  xiv. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE   NATION    AND   ITS    SOVEREIGN    RIGHTS. 

THE  nation,  in  its  sovereignty,  is  possessed  of  certain 
necessary  rights.  These  are  rights  which  are  involved  in 
the  attainment  of  its  necessary  end  in  history.  They  sub- 
sist in  the  unity  of  the  nation,  and  in  their  historical  manifes- 
tation, they  become  the  indices  of  its  sovereignty.  They 
have  thus  an  integral  character ;  they  are  not  an  indiscrimi- 
nate and  incongruous  collection  of  powers,  but  are  formed  in 
a  necessary  correlation,  as  the  sequence  of  the  unity  in 
which  they  subsist.  They  exist  in  the  correspondence  of 
rights  and  duties,  and  there  is  resident  in  them  the  neces- 
sary responsibilities  of  the  nation. 

Firstly ;  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  involves  the  right 
to  its  own  existence.  The  right  which  is  precedent  to  all 
others  is  the  right  of  the  nation  to  be  ;  the  law  which, 
in  the  conflict  of  laws,  abrogates  all  others,  is  the 
law  of  its  supreme  necessity.  It  may,  therefore,  in  its 
necessity,  interrupt  and  suspend  the  ordinary  course  of 
rights  in  their  reference  to  the  individual  or  the  commu- 
nity. 

The  supreme  object  of  the  government  is  to  care  for  the 
preservation  of  the  nation.  In  this  end,  it  is  justified,  in 
its  necessity,  in  the  suspension  of  the  ordinary  procedure 
of  its  law  and  order,  which  then  becomes  the  assertion  of 
its  higher  law,  and  the  maintenance  of  its  enduring  order. 
The  principle  of  action  is  them,  solus  populi^  suprema  lex. 
When  the  necessity  of  the  nation  thus  demands  it,  it 
is  not  the  negation  of  rights  and  of  laws,  but  in  the 
deeper  sense  and  sequence  their  maintenance.  But  in 


160 


THE  NATION. 


this  action,  the  necessity  of  the  government  is  the  expo- 
nent of  the  necessity  of  the  nation,  and  of  and  for  itself, 
the  government  has  no  right  to  interrupt  the  process  of 
laws. 

It  is  justified  only  as  the  peril  of  the  nation  is  ac- 
tual or  imminent.  There  is  no  consideration  of  a  result- 
ant advantage  that  can  become  its  ground,  since  then  it 
would  presume  to  be  itself  the  normal  law  and  condition 
of  the  land.  It  is  a  power  so  high,  and  yet  so  imperative, 
that  there  should  be  in  the  constitution  itself  the  careful 
provision  for  its  exercise,  and  the  protection  from  its  abuse. 

The  right  has  been  recognized  as  necessary  by  every 
historical  people.  In  Rome,  it  was  asserted  in  the  words, 
"  videant  Consules  ne  quid  detrimenti  capiat  respublica"  ; 
in  England,  it  is  construed  in  the  right  to  suspend  the 
habeas  corpus ;  in  France,  Italy,  and  Germany,  in  the  right 
to  declare  martial  law ;  in  Rome,  it  could  be  formally  exer- 
cised only  by  an  act  of  the  senate,  and  in  England,  by  an 
act  of  parliament. 

The  nation  may  call  for  the  willing  sacrifice  of  the  life 
and  property  of  its  members,  and  this  has  its  precedent  in 
the  being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  person,  to  whom  is  given 
a  vocation  in  the  moral  order  of  the  world.  The  sacrifice 
of  the  individual  is  for  the  longer  life,  and  the  surrender  of 
material  wealth,  is  for  that  in  which  the  moral  acquisitions 
of  humanity  are  conserved.  But  this  is  consistent  alone 
with  the  being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  person,  and  when 
the  nation  is  assumed  to  exist  only  as  a  necessary  evil,  or 
only  for  the  protection  of  property  and  persons,  this  right 
becomes  a  contradiction,  since  in  the  one  instance  it  would 
be  the  deference  to  a  mere  fate,  and  in  the  other  its  exer- 
cise would  presume  an  immediate  negation  of  its  end. 

Secondly ;  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  embraces  the 
right  to  declare  war  and  to  conclude  peace}-  The  nation 

i  Bothe  says,  "  Every  war  which  is  morally  justifiable,  is  a  national  war  "  — 
Theologitche  EthiJe,  vol.  iii.  sec.  2,  p.  958. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  SOVEREIGN  RIGHTS.  161 

is  the  investiture  on  the  earth  of  right  with  might ;  it  is 
constituted  as  a  power  in  the  moral  order  of  the  world 
and  for  the  maintenance  of  that  order.  The  right  to 
declare  and  make  war  belongs  only  to  the  nation,  and 
to  that  only  as  the  minister  of  righteousness,  the  power 
which  in  its  normal  being  is  to  assert  justice  against  vio- 
lence, and  law  against  anarchy,  and  freedom  against  op- 
pression. The  nation  in  its  sovereignty  alone  can  declare 
war,  and  alone  can  conclude  peace,  to  which  all  surrender 
is  made.  The  nation  has  therefore  the  supreme  command 
of  the  physical  force  of  the  people,  —  its  military.  In  the 
armed  might  of  the  nation  there  is  the  manifestation  of  its 
power,  but  the  might  is  to  be  one  with  the  people  in  its 
unity  and  its  totality,  and  then  there  can  be  no  danger  to 
the  freedom  of  the  individual  or  of  the  whole,  but  there  is 
the  immediate  security  of  that  freedom.  Therefore  every 
member  of  the  nation  that  can  bear  arms,  and  not  a  sepa- 
rate order  and  organization,  must  be  trained  to  arms.1  This 
belongs  to  the  education  of  the  whole  people,  and  should 
be  the  instruction  of  its  schools  and  universities  ;  there 
is  in  this  the  moral  significance  of  the  world  discipline, 
which  the  study  of  the  technic  of  science  and  of  abstract 
propositions  inclines  to  forget,  and  which  always  has  so 
singular  beauty  in  its  significance  in  the  pages  of  Roman 
literature.  This  discipline  is  presumed  in  the  nation  in 
its  being  as  a  moral  person,  and  is  inconsequent  in  edu- 
cation only  as  instruction  is  limited  to  a  formal  or  an  in- 
dividual conception  of  the  nation.  It  is  as  one  army  that 
the  people  becomes  conscious  of  its  power  as  a  nation. 
There  is  then  the  apprehension  of  righteousness  as  no  ab- 
stract principle  or  spectral  ideal,  but  as  invested  with  might 
on  the  earth.  Then  there  appears  that  spirit  of  sacrifice 
in  which  the  unity  of  the  nation*  is  laid,  and  in  which  its 

tUThe  army  must  not  only  be  national,  but  be  the  nation,  —  the  nation  in  so 
far  as  it  is  capable  of  bearing  arms,  in  its  totality,  must  form  the  army."  — 
Rothe,  Theologische  Ethik,  vol.  ii.  sec.  2,  p.  964. 
11 


162  THE  NATION. 

life  is  gained.  Then  the  prophecy  of  the  future  of  the 
nation  is  not  in  those  that  are,  but  in  those  that  have  given 
themselves  for  it,  and  its  continuity  is  in  those  that  died 
that  the  nation  might  live.1 

The  declaration  of  war,  therefore,  can  be  justified  only 
as  it  is  national,  or  the  act  of  the  nation.  Its  end  is  to  be . 
that  which  is  involved  in  the  being  of  the  nation,  and  in 
its  vocation  in  a  moral  order.  This  indicates  the  spirit  in 
which  war  is  to  be  conducted.  It  is  to  be  waged  with  no 
individual  hostility,  nor  against  private  persons,  nor  with 
a  subordination  to  private  ends.  It  is  not  the  destruction 
of  the  lives  or  of  the  property  of  men  that  is  its  object ;  it 
is  not  the  destruction,  but  the  defeat  of  the  enemy  that  is 
sought ;  and  all  destruction  is  justified  only  as  necessary  to 
its  prosecution,  or  to  the  public  defense,  or  as  effecting  a 
more  speedy  termination,  and  a  more  sure  peace.2 

The  formal  declaration  of  war  and  conclusion  of  peace 
must  be  the  act  of  the  nation  in  its  sovereignty ;  a  com- 
pany or  a  division  of  an  army  may,  with  no  immediate 
authorization,  in  certain  circumstances,  commence  hostili- 
ties, but  it  cannot  declare  war ;  and  the  enemy  may  lay 
down  its  arms,  before  a  company  or  a  division  of  an  army, 
but  it  cannot  conclude  peace. 

Since  there  belongs  to  the  nation  the  supreme  command 
of  the  physical  force  of  the  people,  the  nation  can  allow, 
within  its  limits,  the  accumulation  of  no  force  which  is 
not  subject  to  its  ultimate  authority.  The  commonwealth 

1  "  The  meaning  and  the  end  of  the  military  power  of  the  nation,  is  found 
not  merely  in  the  conquering  of  enemies,  and  the  suppressing  of  rebels,  and  the 
preservation  of  an  undisturbed  order,  but  in  that  the  nation  itself  in  its  might 
shall  stand  forth  as  a  righteous  warrior."  —  Stahl,  Phiksophie  des  Rechts,  vol. 
ii.  sec.  2,  p.  180. 

"This  might  is  not  merely  the  outward  means,  for  the  maintenance  of  public 
order,  but  it  is  also  in  itself  the  moral  energy  of  the  nation."  —  Stahl,  vol.  ii.  sec. 
2,  p.  140. 

2  A  very  striking  definition  of  war  is  cited  by  Rothe  from  Wirth,  —  "the 
power  of  one  people  against  another  people  in  its  whole  might,  its  totality." 

Pomponius,  —  "hostes  sunt  quibus  bellum  publice  populus  Romanus  decre- 
vit;  coateri  latrunculi  vel  praedones  appellantur." 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  SOVEREIGN  RIGHTS.  163 

necessarily  cannot  declare  war,  nor  conclude  peace,  and 
it  lias  in  its  direction  the  physical  force,  only  as  a  con- 
stabulary for  the  maintenance  of  internal  order,  and  for 
operations  only  within  its  confines.  The  nation,  in  its 
sovereignty  alone,  can  appeal  to  the  issues  of  war,  in 
which  the  existence  of  the  whole  is  involved. 

The  nation,  in  its  physical  as  in  its  moral  unity  and 
being,  is  a  power  over  the  individual,  and  must  effect 
its  purpose,  notwithstanding  individual  caprice  or  intent. 
But  in  the  basis  of  the  state,  in  a  mere  individualism, 
there  is  the  foundation  for  none  of  its  rights  of  sovereignty, 
nor  can  it  justify  their  necessary  action.  It  is  not  the 
security  of  property  and  persons  which  is  primarily  in- 
volved in  war ;  but  it  is  the  direct  reverse ;  and  the  call 
of  the  nation,  in  its  right  in  war,  belongs  to  no  individual 
and  no  collection  of  individuals,  but  it  is  an  authority  in  and 
over  the  whole. 

The  end  of  war  is  peace,  "a  peace  that  will  come, 
and  come  to  stay."  A  universal  peace  is  the  goal  of  the 
nations  in  history.  But  it  is  assured  only  in  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  unity  and  of  the  being  of  nations,  and  in 
their  higher  development  and  power  there  is  the  advance 
toward  peace  and  its  surer  prophecy.1 

1  Napoleon  III.  has  often  expressed  this,  but  it  is  not  in  the  empire. 

Rothe  says:  "That  end  which  is  a  universal  peace  is  approached  in  the 
same  degree  in  which  the  idea  of  the  nation  —  the  political  idea,  fills  and 
penetrates  the  consciousness  of  the  people." — Theologische  Ethik,  vol.  iii.  sec. 
2,  p.  954. 

The  recognition  of  the  Rebels  as  belligerents,  by  England,  and  their  conse- 
quent investiture  with  the  rights  of  war,  indicated  the  spirit  of  an  hereditary 
aristocracy,  a  governing  caste  toward  the  nation,  and  its  want  of  all  con- 
sciousness of  national  rights  and  duties,  and  the  subordination  of  national  to 
private  interests.  It  was  not  the  act  of  the  people  of  England,  if  there  be  a 
people.  The  neutrality,  which  England  professed  between  the  nation  and  the 
ebels  who  were  seeking  to  destroy  it,  in  the  nature  of  things  and  in  the  moral 
order  which  is  the  precedent  of  the  laws  or*nations,  was  no  neutralitj*;  but  her 
recognition  of  them  as  belligerents,  and  their  investiture  with  the  rights  of  war, 
threw  around  them  the  protection  of  rules  and  regulations  which  were  formed  in 
international  law  only  for  nations,  and  placed  a  rebel  force,  in  the  view  of  Roman 
law  —  latrunculi  vel  prcedones  —  on  t'he  same  footing  with  a  nation,  and  the  ad- 
vantage was  secured  to  them  of  the  rights  of  nations,  while  the  hazard  of  their 
political  recognition  as  a  nation  was  avoided. 


164  THE  NATION. 

Thirdly ;  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  embraces  the  right 
to  form  and  sustain  international  relations.  This  is  in 
history  the  immediate  sign  or  note  of  political  sovereignty. 
It  is  the  formal  manifestation  of  the  external  sovereignty 
of  the  nation.  It  belongs  to  the  nation  alone  to  enter  into 
those  relations  with  other  nations  which  are  in  the  prov- 
ince of  international  law ;  it  alone  can  make  treaties  with 
them,  and  send  ministers  and  embassies  to  them,  and  re- 
ceive them  in  turn. 

Thus,  also,  the  members  of  a  nation  can  have  no  public 
or  official  communication  with  another  nation,  excepting 
through  the  representatives  of  the  nation  to  which  they 
belong,  and  can  receive  from  another  no  mark  of  honor  or 
consideration  without  its  consent.  Thus,  also,  no  repre- 
sentative of  another  nation  can  be  accredited  to,  nor 
recognized  by,  nor  in  his  official  character  hold  com- 
munication with  any  individual  or  section  of  a  nation, 
excepting  through  the  constituted  authority  of  the  nation. 

Fourthly  ;  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  embraces  the  right 
to  adopt  in  its  citizenship,  and  to  invest  with  political  rights 
and  powers,  those  whom  it  may  for  this  object  elect,  of 
those  who  may  emigrate  to  it.  Thus,  also,  each  citizen 
has  the  protection  of  the  nation,  in  the  rights  it  has  con- 
ferred, not  only  through  its  whole  domain,  but  among 
other  nations  in  so  far  as  these  rights  are  defined  by 
treaty ;  and,  wherever  he  may  go,  he  may  claim,  in  his 
integrity,  its  defense.  It  throws  around  each  its  entire 
majesty,  and  an  injury  to  the  least  who  is  its  citizen 
is  an  injury  to  the  whole. 

There  is  for  every  person  who  is  in  the  nation,  or  may 
travel  or  reside  in  it,  security  in  civil  rights,  —  the  protec- 
tion of  life,  liberty,  and  property,  in  conformance  to  its  civil 
administration  and  subjection  to  its  civil  authority,  —  since 
these  rights  subsist  in  the  necessary  relations  of  life ;  but 
it  belongs  only  to  the  nation,  in  its  sovereignty  and  its  free- 
dom, to  invest  those  who  may  come  to  it  with  political 
rights,  —  its  citizenship  and  its  freedom. 


THE  NATION   AND  ITS  SOVEREIGN  RIQWjfy  165 

But  the  citizens  of  another  nation,  wnV  g^ay  travfel  or, 
reside  in  it,  or  acquire  and  hold  ^ropeWy,in  it,  £jfy  subject   /  " 
to  the  conditions  of  its  civil  order.     Tne/jbdd  prtfjpepty 
on  the  same  conditions  with  its  own  citizens/^*4  -1-*— * 


with  theirs  to  loss  incurred  by  accident,  by  4{ie  pbf&ble 
interruption  of  order  in  social  crises  and  by  the  yicissi- 
tudes  of  war.  No  nation  can  invade  the  domain  of^ffl-^ 
other  on  the  pretense  of  the  maintenance  of  the  civil  rights 
of  its  citizens,  nor  obtain  any  reparation  for  loss  or  injury 
to  persons  or  property  which  may  arise  in  these  circum- 
stances, except  that  which  is  allowed  by  the  nation  itself 
to  its  own  citizens.  The  opposite  principle  would  involve 
not  only  an  unequal  preference  of  aliens,  but  would  con- 
cede to  them  an  increased  security,  —  that  of  the  land  to 
which  they  belong,  in  addition  to  that  of  the  land  in  which 
they  choose  simply  to  reside  and  hold  possessions. 

Fifthly  ;  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  embraces  the  right 
to  coin  and  issue  money  —  the  representative  of  all  values 
within  it.  The  signature  of  the  nation  which  is  stamped 
upon  the  money  it  issues,  is  the  sign  of  its  power  in  its 
original  right  of  possession,  and  of  the  maintenance  of  prop- 
erty, as  an  institute  of  the  nation,  whose  value  it  is  to  sus- 
tain. The  description  of  money  is  not  limited  to  a  single 
style,  as  gold  or  silver  or  copper,  which  form  in  common 
the  accepted  standard  of  values,  and  which  in  the  trans- 
action of  exchange  are  less  rude  than  an  exchange  in  cat- 
tle, but  are  not  of  themselves  stable. 

But  the  nation,  in  the  exercise  of  this  power,  does  not 
and  cannot  by  any  formal  act  create  values,  and  as  it  is  to 
maintain  the  institution  of  property  by  its  laws,  so  in  the 
issuing  of  money  there  is  to  be  the  representation  of 
actual  values.  The  issue  which  does  not  represent  actual 
values,  but  is  made  a  legal  tendeV  in  the  formal  exchange 
of  values,  as  in  the  liquidation  of  contracts,  may  be  and  is 
justified  in  the  temporary  destruction  of  war,  while  yet  it 
A  destructive  of  actual  values  and  can  have  no  justification 


166  THE  NATION. 

in  peace.  It  becomes  then,  not  an  appropriation  of  a 
part  by  the  nation,  in  its  supreme  necessity,  when  the 
nation  in  its  original  right  owns  the  whole,  but  a  fraud, 
and  involves  the  robbery  not  only  of  the  poor  but  of  all 
men. 

The  crime  of  issuing  counterfeit  money  is  also  twofold, 
and  is  not  only  a  fraud  and  a  robbery,  but  in  a  higher 
degree  is  a  crime  against  the  state. 

Sixthly.  The  sovereignty  of  the  nation  involves  the  right 
which  is  described  in  its  formal  phrase,  as  the  imperium  or 
eminent  domain.  The  organic  people  holds  the  possession 
and  inheritance  of  the  land,  as  one  and  indivisible.  The 
supreme  authority  over  the  whole  land  belongs  to  the 
people  in  its  organic  and  moral  being,  and  it  has  a  right 
correspondent  to  its  authority  not  only  over  persons  but 
over  the  land  and  all  things  in  it. 

It  is  to  maintain  the  authority  and  the  supremacy  of  its 
laws  through  the  whole  domain.  In  this  rests  the  right 
of  the  nation  to  interdict  the  assumption  of  authority  or 
the  exercise  of  power  by  another  nation  within  its  ter- 
ritory. Therefore  no  foreign  government  can  perform 
within  it  an  office,  even  of  civil  police,  without  its  con- 
sent, and  can  hold  no  possession  or  private  estate  within 
it,  but  as  subject  to  its  authority.  This  is  the  occasion  for 
treaties  of  extradition. 

The  right  appears  also  in  the  levying  of  taxes,  which 
are  a  prior  lien  upon  all  property  within  it.  A  tax  is 
not,  as  in  false  representations  of  the  state,  primarily  a 
certain  amount  paid  to  the  nation  in  consideration  of  the 
advantages  obtained  from  it,  nor  as  an  equivalent  for  its 
protection,  nor  is  it  a  certain  sum  donated  to  it  in  order  to 
secure  the  remainder,  but  it  is  the  taking  by  the  nation, 
for  its  own  necessary  use,  of  that  which  it  alone  holds  in 
full  in  its  original  right. 

This  right  forbids  the  alienation  of  any  part  of  that 
which  by  nature  and  in  history  constitutes  the  domain 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS   SOVEREIGN  RIGHTS.  167 

of  the  people  in  its  integral  unity.1  In  the  barbaric  con- 
stitutions and  in  the  feudal  system,  the  ruler  could  divide 
or  transfer  the  domain,  as  in  the  administration  of  a 
private  estate ;  but,  in  the  public  character  of  the  domain 
of  the  nation,  it  is  held,  as  constituted  in  nature  and  in 
history,  as  one,  and  as  inalienable  and  indivisible. 

This  right  includes  the  immediate,  that  is,  the  pro- 
prietary right,  to  certain  places  and  parts  which  are  the 
immediate  possession  of,  and  are  to  be  held  by,  the  nation 
in  its  sovereignty.  This  includes,  —  Firstly,  All  that 
which  by  its  nature  is  withdrawn  from  private  possession, 
or  is  of  immediate  necessity  for  the  public  use.  The 
rivers,  lakes,  bays,  and  harbors  or*  ship-homesteads,  and 
the  great  highways,  the  military  and  post-roads  and 
telegraph-routes,  are  of  this  description.  The  line,  for 
instance,  of  the  Ohio  or  the  Mississippi,  the  bay  of  New 
York  or  San  Francisco,  or  the  passes  of  the  Atlantic  and 
the  Pacific  Railways,  are  the  possession  of  the  whole 
people,  and  belong  to  the  nation.  They  do  not  belong 
to  those  who  are  resident  by  them,  but  are  the  domain 
of  the  people.  Secondly,  This  includes  all  places  and 
parts  which  by  nature  are  formed  for  the  defense  of  the 
whole.  The  cliffs  or  outlooks  which  are  suited  for  forts 
or  signal-stations,  or  the  lines  adapted  to  military  for- 
tifications, or  places  for  naval  yards  are  of  this  descrip- 
tion. Thirdly,  This  includes  all  waste  and  unoccupied 
lands  and  places  throughout  the  whole ;  thus,  the  ter- 
ritories are  in  the  immediate  ownership  of  the  nation. 
Fourthly,  To  this  may  be  added  the  immediate  possession, 
by  the  nation,  of  its  capital.  This  is  not  a  city  simply  of 
certain  municipal  privileges,  but  belongs  to  the  nation, 
and,  in  its  central  position,  should  be  free  from  immediate 
social  and  commercial  influences  and  their  agitation.  It  is 

1 "  The  mere  rectification  of  a  boundary  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  the  alienation 
of  the  domain  of  the  state.  A  part  of  the  domain  of  the  state  is  not  alienated 
thereby,  but  the  whole  is  more  exactly  defined."  —  Bluntschli,  Allgemeines 
Statsrechts,  vol.  i.  p.  217. 


168  THE  NATION. 

the  place  of  the  government  and  of  the  ordained  and  repre- 
sentative majesty  of  the  nation ;  it  is  the  witness  of  its 
unity  ;  it  is  connected  with  the  long  line  of  its  presidents 
and  representatives,  and  judges  ;  and  around  it  gather  the 
armies  of  the  nation ;  and  over  it,  always,  the  nation's  flag 
is  floating ;  to  it  the  ministers  of  all  other  nations  must 
proceed ;  from  it  there  goes  forth  that  law  which  is  an 
authority  over  the  whole  people  and  through  the  whole 
land.  It  is  around  its  capital  that  the  deepest  associations 
gather ;  its  peril  stands  for  the  peril  of  the  people,  and  its 
deliverance  is  the  sign  of  the  deliverance  of  the  people. 

In  the  necessary  correlation  of  rights  and  duties,  there 
is  also  attached  to  this  right  the  duty  of  the  nation,  in  its 
physical  progress,  to  undertake  and  execute  those  works 
which  are  necessary  to  the  well-being  of  the  people,  and 
which  by  their  nature  are  beyond  private  enterprise,  and 
are  removed  from  the  immediate  scope  of  individual  inter- 
est and  individual  power,  such,  for  instance,  as  the  con- 
struction of  military  and  post  roads,  the  improvement  of 
rivers  and  harbors,  the  survey  of  coasts,  the  building  of 
lighthouses,  the  planting  of  forests,  etc. 

The  fact  that  whenever  the  nation  may  assume  pos- 
session of  any  place  and  part,  compensation  is  rendered, 
involves  no  contradiction  of  the  right  of  eminent  domain. 
The  national  right  is  asserted  in  the  right  to  effect  a  ces- 
sion of  the  property,  and  the  private  right  the  nation  itself 
sustains,  in  the  allowance  of  an  adequate  compensation  to 
those  in  immediate  possession. 

This  right  comprehends,  also,  the  right  in  the  nation  to 
the  extension  of  its  domain  by  purchase,  by  occupancy, 
or  by  conquest.  The  extension  of  its  domain  is  the  act  of 
the  nation  in  its  sovereignty.  When  another  nation  is 
affected,  it  may  be  by  treaty,  and  this  is  a  free  and  peace- 
ful cession.  To  this  Grotius  first  added  as  a  condition,  the 
consent  of  the  present  occupants  of  the  parts  annexed ;  but 
the  interests  of  the  nation  are  in  no  comparison  with  those 


THE  NATION  AND   ITS   SOVEREIGN  RIGHTS.  169 


of  an  isolated  and  detached  territory  in  which  there  is  no 
political  organization  and  no  political  life,  and  the  former 
cannot-  be  conditioned  upon  the  latter.  The  requisition  of 
an  inquiry,  as  to  the  consent  of  the  existing  occupants,  has 
only  a  formal  justification,  and  is  a  pedantic  compliance 
with  a  formal  political  theory.1 

The  inquiry  as  to  the  residence  of  the  right  of  eminent 
domain  in  the  United  States  has  an  interest  for  lawyers, 
as  the  phrase  is  strictly  technical ;  but  it  has  only  a  formal 
interest,  and  the  fact  is  determined  in  the  political  being  of 
the  political  people.  The  evidence  of  the  subsistence  of 
the  right  in  the  people  of  the  United  States  rests  in  the 
fact,  firstly,  that  the  organic  and  historical  people  is,  and 
can  only  be,  the  dominus  or  lord :  secondly,  that  the  de- 
fense of  the  whole  domain  is  in  and  of  the  United  States 
alone :  thirdly,  that  all  acquisition  of  territory,  by  purchase 
or  conquest,  is  by  the  United  States  alone,  and  the  imme- 
diate transferal  is  to  the  United  States,  as  in  Louisiana 
and  Alaska:  fourthly,  that  all  rectifications  and  deter- 
minations of  boundaries  are  made  in  and  through  the 
United  States  alone :  fifthly,  that  treaties  of  extradition  are 
made  by  the  United  States  alone,  and  from  it  alone  can  the 
extradition  of  any  person  be  obtained:  sixthly,  that  all 
vacant  and  unoccupied  territories  are  held  by  the  United 
States  alone:  seventhly,  that  taxation  by  the  United  States 
is  a  prior  lien  upon  all  property  throughout  the  whole  :  and 
finally,  on  the  other  hand,  the  fact  that  no  commonwealth 
can  enter  upon  or  effect  an  acquisition  of  territory,  nor 
alienate  territory  to  a  foreign  power,  and  that  no  common- 

1  The  principle  which  is  to  govern  territorial  extension  has  been  stated  as 
follows:  "  The  government  has  long  since  laid  down  its  principles  in  respect  of 
territorial  extension.  It  comprehends,  it  has  comprehended,  those  annexations 
which  are  commanded  by  an  absolute  necessity,  uniting  to  the  country  popula- 
tions having  the  same  manners  and  the  same  national  spirit  as  ours.  France 
can  only  desire  such  territorial  aggrandizements  as  do  not  impair  her  territorial 
cohesion,  but  she  should  always  labor  for  her  moral  and  political  aggrandizement 
by  using  her  influence  to  advance  the  great  interests  of  civilization."  —  Napoleon 
"UI.  Circular.  1868. 


170  THE  NATION. 

wealth  can  of  itself  determine  its  own  boundaries  or  effect 
their  rectification ;  these  considerations,  from  a  simply  legal 
position,  are  decisive.  But  if  there  is  a  legal  doubt,  let  it 
be  supposed  that,  in  fact,  some  commonwealth  begins  a 
course  of  territorial  aggrandizement,  or  attempts  the  aliena- 
tion of  any  portion  of  territory  to  a  foreign  power,  and  the 
error  in  the  claim  becomes  apparent. 

The  legal  confusion  has  arisen  from  the  fact  that  while 

o 

the  right  of  eminent  domain  is  in  the  United  States,  the 
formal  administration  of  the  power  implied  in  the  right,  as 
a  civil  procedure,  is  referred  to  the  commonwealth  in  con- 
formance  to  its  normal  constitution.  The  evidence  as- 
signed for  the  residence  of  the  right,  primarily  and  exclu- 
sively, in  the  commonwealth,  has  been  in  the  fact  that  all 
private  escheats  fall  to  it,  but  this  conforms  to  the  province 
of  the  commonwealth,  since  private  interests  are  consti- 
tuted in  it ;  but  no  general  or  public  escheats  fall  to  the 
commonwealth,  and  it  has  within  its  confines  the  right  to 
vacated  lands,  but  it  has  no  right  to  vacant  lands.  There 
is  the  fact  of  the  possession  of  unoccupied  lands  by  Texas, 
but  this  is  anomalous  and  ought  not  to  be  allowed  to 
remain.1 

1  "  The  dominus  is  the  United  States,  and  the  domain  of  the  whole  territory, 
whether  meted  into  particular  States  or  not,  is  in  the  United  States.  The 
United  States  do  not  part  with  the  domain  of  that  portion  of  the  national  do- 
main included  within  a  particular  State." — Brownson,  American  Republic,  p.  300. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  NATION    AND   ITS   NORMAL   POWERS. 

THE  sovereignty  of  the  nation  has  its  institution  in  the 
j  powers  in  which  the  government  is  constituted.  The  will 
of  the  organic  people,  in  its  normal  action,  works  through 
different  members,  to  which  are  attached  different  func- 
.  tions.  The  nature  of  these  powers  and  these  functions  is 
implicit  in  the  nation  in  its  organism,  —  their  manifesta- 
tion is  in  the  process  of  freedom  and  of  rights. 

The  formal  organization  of  these  powers  has  obtained  its 
higher  construction  in  the  modern  age.  The  distinction 
of  their  different  organs  and  their  functions,  is  illustrative 
of  its  higher  development.  In  the  political  body,  as  in  the 
physical,  each  organ  has  its  separate  use  for  which  it  is 
!  formed,  and  each  has  no  separate  existence,  but  they  sub- 
sist as  the  organs  of  one  body. 

The  distinction  of  these  powers,  although  in  imperfect 
outline,  is  traced  by  Aristotle.  He  describes,  firstly,  the 
assembly  for  public  affairs ;  secondly,  the  chief  magistracy, 
—  the  executive  power ;  thirdly,  the  judicial  power.  The 
decision  in  regard  to  all  crimes  of  a  public  character  is  re- 
ferred to  the  first  or  the  legislative  power  and  the  chief 
magistracy  or  the  executive  power  is  made  subordinate  to 
it.  "It  is  the  proper  work  of  the  popular  assembly  to 
determine  concerning  war  and  peace ;  to  make  or  termi- 
nate alliances ;  to  enact  laws ;  to  sentence  to  death,  ban- 
ishment, or  confiscation  of  goods ;  and  to  call  the  magis- 
trates to  account  for  their  behavior*  when  in  office."  * 

In  modern  politics  the  distinction  has  been  held  in  a 
i  Politics,  bk.  iv.  ch.  14. 


172  THE  NATION. 

clearer  and  firmer  conception,  and  obtained  a  wider  ac- 
tualization through  Locke  and  Montesquieu,  but  it  has 
been  defined  by  none  with  greater  fullness  than  by  the 
earlier  American  publicists,  and  especially  in  the  writings 
of  President  Madison.  Its  genesis  forms  one  of  the  most 
significant  pages  in  the  history  of  modern  politics.  The 
assertion  of  legislative  and  judicial  powers,  as  original  in 
the  civil  and  political  organization,  against  the  sole  and  ex- 
clusive prerogative  of  a  king,  to  the  exercise  of  all  powers, 
has  been  indicative  of  the  advance  of  freedom ;  and  the 
assertion  of  the  distinction  of  all  these  powers,  and  their 
ampler  development,  has  been  indicative  that  the  more 
perfect  organization  of  the  nation  is  in  the  realization  of 
freedom.  The  distinction  of  the  normal  powers  of  the 
nation  in  its  civil  and  political  organization  has  been  prin- 
cipally as  the  Legislative,  the  Executive,  and  the  Judicial.1 

1  There  have  been  various  analyses  of  these  powers,  but  their  value  is  chiefly 
illustrative,  and  they  have  no  correspondent  historical  justification.  The  de- 
scription of  Locke,  and  of  Montesquieu,  and  also  of  Hegel  is,  I.  Legislative.  — 
Pouvoir  Ugislatif.  II.  Executive,  —  Pouvoir  executif.  III.  Judicial,  —  Pou- 
voir judidare.  B.  Constants  added  to  these,  IV.  An  intermediate  power,— 
Pouvoir  moderaleur.  This  was  an  attempt  to  define  more  clearly  their  unity. 
The  executive  power  has  also  been  further  divided  into  (a.)  An  administrative 
power,  —  Pouvoir  administralif ;  and  (b.)  A  supervisory  power,  —  Pouvoir  in- 
spective. 

Trendelenburg  designates  four  powers,  —  vier  functionen,  —  I.  The  Govern- 
ment, —  Die  Regie-rung.  II.  The  Military  power.  III.  The  Legislative  power. 
IV.  The  Judicial  power.  But  it  is  obvious  that  the  Military  is  not  a  power  cor- 
responding to  the  other  powers,  since  it  is  simply  the  organization  of  the  physi- 
cal force  of  the  whole;  it  is  in  subjection  to  the  political  power,  and  its  neces- 
sary principle  of  action  is  that  of  entire  subordination  in  the  political  whole.  — 
Trendelenburg.  Naturrechte,  p.  160. 

Bluntschli's  description  indicates  the  tendency  of  recent  German  publicists. 
The  common  distinction  is  criticized  as  too  formal  and  abstract,  as  something 
\\ry  and  pedantic,  and  this  also  is  the  criticism  of  Stahl.  In  Bluntschli's  state- 
ment the  legislative  power  is  necessarily  precedent,  and  is  over  against  all 
others  and  is  regulative  of  them,  but  in  the  organization  of  this  power,  the 
Crown  and  the  Parliament,  or  the  President  and  the  Congress  form  each  an  in- 
tegral and  inseparable  element.  The  powers  are  thus  defined,  as,  I.  The  Gov- 
ernment, —  Die  Regierungsgewalt,  das  Regiment.  II.  The  Court,  —  Die  Richter- 
Hchegewalt,  das  Gericht.  III.  The  Public  Instruction,  —  Die  Statscultur.  IV. 
The  Public  Economy,  —  Die  Wirthschaft.  The  presentation  of  these  powers  is 
given  with  great  fullness  of  historical  illustration.  —  Allgemeines  Statsrecht, 
vol.  i.  pp.  446, 503. 


THE  NATION  AND   ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  173 

These  powers  in  their  origin  and  content  are  not  deter- 
mined in  some  historical  accident ;  nor  are  they  merely  the 
expedient  of  human  ingenuity,  for  which  some  substitute 
may  be  found  in  some  other  and  better  expedient,  whereby, 
for  instance,  legislative  or  judicial  functions  shall  be  super- 
seded; nor  are  they  the  sequence  of  some  formal  law. 
They  are  the  manifestation  of  that  which  is  immanent  in 
the  organism  of  the  nation.1 

These  powers  represent  the  will  of  the  organic  people 
in  its  civil  and  political  organization.  Their  origin  is  in 
the  necessary  being  of  the  nation,  and  their  action  is  its 
normal  process. 

The  necessary  characteristics  of  these  powers  may  be 
traced  in  their  structure. 

These  powers  are  organic.  They  are  not  the  mere  inci- 
dent of  the  action  of  the  state,  their  distinction  is  not  acci- 
dental nor  arbitrary.  They  are  not  merely  an  artificial 
contrivance ;  their  connection  and  their  action  is  not  as  in 
some  ingeniously  devised  mechanism,  but  as  subsistent  in 
the  civil  and  political  organism  their  action  is  unitary  and 
organic,  and  in  the  civil  and  political  development  is  their 
ampler  organization. 

There  is  an  abstract  conception  which  represents  the 
state  as  simple  not  complex,  as  arbitrary  not  natural  in  its 
structure,  but  the  law  of  organic  life  appears  in  it  also  — 

"  More  complex,  is  more  perfect,  owning  more 
Discourse,  more  widely  wise." 

1  Kant  finds  the  source  and  the  necessity  for  these  powers  in  the  formula  of 
logic,  and  they  are  presented  as  corresponding  to  its  sequence.  But  they  can 
have  their  ground  in  no  formal  or  empty  conception,  either  in  logic  or  law ; 
their  ground  is  in  the  organism  of  the  state,  that  is,  the  political  organism, 
and  their  correspondence  is  to  its  real  constitution.  The  presentation  of  Kant 
is  consistent,  however,  with  his  formal  conception  of  freedom  and  of  rights.  — 
Rechtslehre,  sec.  xiv. 

"  The  exercise  of  power,  whether  by  an  individual  or  a  nation,  is  naturally 
divided  into  thinking,  judging,  and  doing.  Action  implies  all  three :  thought 
to  originate,  will  and  force  to  execute  a  conceived  purpose,  judgment  to  compare 
it  with  rules  of  conduct"  — Fisher.  The  Trial  of  the  Constitution,  p.  41. 


174 


THE  NATION. 


The  tendency  which  this  conception  constantly  induces, 
in  its  correspondence  with  an  empty  and  barren  concep- 
tion of  freedom,  is  to  eradicate  those  institutions  which 
have  been  established  in  the  ampler  organization  of  the 
state.1  The  substitute,  when  all  are  swept  away,  is  the 
reconstruction  of  the  whole  after  some  abstract  scheme 
or  some  formal  design.  But  freedom  is  not  found  in  the 
vacant  spaces  which  this  devastating  force  has  opened,  nor 
in  the  sweep  of  their  bleak  and  windy  plains;  the  as- 
sumption again  combines  the  conceit  of  individual  egoism 
with  the  limitless  caprice  in  which  freedom  is  feigned  to 
exist. 

There  is  also  a  representation  of  these  powers,  as  simply 
a  well  adjusted  balance,  when  each  is  of  itself  negative  or 
merely  restrictive  of  the  other.  A  trivial  and  superficial 
description  of  their  origin  and  relation  is  formed  after  this 
pattern.  The  nation  is  represented  as  identical  with  the 
formal  construction  of  its  government,  and  described  as 
simply  an  association  of  men  under  laws ;  then  a  power  to 
make  its  laws  must  exist ;  and  as  some  power  is  required  to 
execute  them,  an  executive  is  established ;  and  then  as  an 
arbiter  is  required  between  them  to  regulate  and  settle 
their  differences,  a  judiciary  is  established.  This  repre- 
sentation is  defective,  since  it  fails  to  define  the  content 
of  these  powers  and  their  relation  to  each  other  and  to  the 
nation,  and  their  subsistence  in  the  unity  of  the  nation. 
It  is  also  destitute  of  an  historical  justification ;  there  has 
been  no  people  the  process  of  whose  government  it  could 
presume  to  describe.  Its  postulate  i§  a  formal  and  mechan- 
ical conception  of  the  state. 

1  "  Nothing  is  more  deceptive  or  more  dangerous  than  the  pretense  of  a  desire 
to  simplify  government.  If  we  will  abolish  the  distinction  of  branches  and  have 
but  one  branch,  if  we  will  abolish  jury  trials  and  leave  all  to  the  judge  ;  if  we 
will  then  ordain  that  the  legislator  shall  himself  be  that  judge  ;  and  if  we  place 
the  executive  power  in  the  same  hands,  we  may  readily  simplify  government. 
We  may  easily  bring  it  to  the  simplest  of  all  forms,  —  a  pure  despotism."  - 
Webster's  Works,  vol.  iv.  p.  122. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  175 

These  powers  are  coordinate;  that  is,  neither  is  so  related 
to  another,  that  it  could  be  defined  as  in  itself  a  negation, 
and  as  existent  only  as  the  instrument  of  another.  Such 
a  definition  would  make  the  action  of  a  power  mechanical, 
and  would  leave  but  one  or  two  actual  powers  in  the  state. 
It  would  be  incorrect  to  represent  the  judiciary  as  existing 
to  receive  the  opinions  and  to  justify  the  actions  of  the 
legislature,  or  to  represent  the  executive  as  only  the  pas- 
sive agent  and  pliant  tool  in  the  hands  of  the  legislature, 
and  neither  of  them  as  having  a  determinate  character 
of  its  own. 

Since  these  powers  subsist  in  the  organism  of  the  whole, 
one  cannot  proceed  from  another,  nor  derive  its  content 
from  another ;  each  subsists  in  the  being  and  immediately 
in  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation.  They  are,  each  in  its 
own  sphere,  invested  with  the  power  and  formal  sover- 
eignty of  the  nation.  Each  is  not  determined  from  or 
through  another,  but,  within  the  limitation  of  its  necessary 
sphere,  exists  in  the  determination  of  the  whole.  Neither 
can  assume  to  represent,  in  its  isolation  from  the  others, 
the  sovereignty  of  the  whole.1 

These  powers  are  coextensive;  they  do  not  exclude  each 
other,  but  each  implies  the  other  and  the  action  of  the 
other;  and  each  acts  in  and  through  the  whole.  Thus, 
no  individual  and  no  section  can  be  entirely  isolated  from 
them. 

These  powers  are  correlative;  not  only  neither  has  its 
ground  in  the  other,  but  neither  has  its  ground  in  itself; 
its  ground  is  only  in  the  whole.  Since  they  subsist  in 
the  nation  they  cannot  be  regarded  as  isolated  and  self- 
subsistent,  but  as  existent  in  a  necessary  correlation.  They 
are  not  separate  sovereignties,  but  each  is  subsistent  in 

1  "It  should  be  remembered  as  an  eternal  truth,  that  whatever  power  ia 
wholly  independent,  is  absolute  also  ;  in  theory  only  at  first,  while  the  spirit  of 
the  people  is  up,  but  in  practice  as  fast  as  that  relaxes."  —  President  Jefferson, 
Letters,  Sept.  6, 1819. 


176  THE  NATION. 

the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  in  its  unity.  They  are  con- 
stituted not  in  a  formal  but  an  organic  unity,  and  there- 
fore each  is  in  necessary  relation  to  the  other,  and  is 
necessary  to  the  completeness  of  the  other. 

The  common  phrase,  "  a  division  of  powers,"  may  be- 
come the  source  of  error  and  disaster.  An  actual  division 
would  imply  the  division  of  the  nation  itself,  and  the  sever- 
ance of  its  sovereignty.  The  very  assumption  of  a  sole  and 
entire  sovereignty,  by  each  or  either  power,  would  tend 
toward  the  dismemberment  of  the  nation,  through  the  ulti- 
mate strife  of  the  one  necessarily  to  subject  the  others  to 
itself.  The  isolation  of  powers,  neither  of  which  subsisted 
in  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation,  but  each  of  which,  as  com- 
plete and  self-subsistent,  held  a  barren  sovereignty  in  itself, 
would  make  the  realization  of  a  national  unity  impossible, 
since  the  unity  involved  in  sovereignty,  would  still  strive 
to  attain  its  necessary  realization  ;  but  this  would  become 
the  occasion  of  conflict,  and  the  actual  and  entire  sover- 
eignty of  the  one  power  would  be  attained  only  in  the 
subversion  of  the  others.  In  the  constant  recognition  of 
this  fact  there  is  the  strength  of  each,  and  each  is  sustained 
in  its  normal  action.1 


1  The  argument  in  The  Federalist  has  for  its  object  the  refutation  of  the  as- 
sumption of  the  entire  isolation  and  severance  of  these  powers,  —  it  is  the  asser- 
tion of  their  necessary  correlation.  President  Madison  stated  as  its  aim  the  prop- 
osition, —  "  that  unless  these  departments  be  so  far  connected  and  blended  as  to 
give  to  each  a  constitutional  control  over  the  others,  the  degree  of  separation 
which  the  maxim  requires  as  essential  to  a  free  government  can  never  be  duly 
maintained."  — The  Federalist,  No.  xlviii. 

Of  the  consequence  of  their  entire  division  Calhoun  savs,  "  Instead  of  a  gov- 
ernment it  would  be  little  better  than  the  regime  of  three  separate  and  con- 
flicting departments,  ultimately  to  be  controlled  by  the  executive  in  consequence 
of  its  having  the  command  of  the  patronage,  etc."  —  Calhoun's  Works,  vol.  i. 
p.  374. 

There  is  no  exception  to  this  statement  in  the  writings  of  any  eminent  mod- 
ern publicist.  Bluntschli  says,  "  The  entire  division  of  powers  would  involve 
the  dissolution  of  the  unity  of  the  state,  and  the  dismemberment  of  the  political 
body."  —  Allgemeines  Statsrechts,  vol.  i.  p.  450. 

"  The  error  involved  in  the  maxim  *  a  division  of  powers '  is  almost  universally 
recognized  in  the  science  of  politics,  but  it  has  not  been  until  it  has  wrought  the 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  177 


There  is  thus  in  the  government,  no  aggregate  of 
powers,  but  the  manifestation  of  an  inner  and  an  ideal 
unity  as  it  exists  in  the  sovereignty  of  the  organic  people. 

These  powers  are  the  distinct  powers  of  tjie  civil  and 
political  organism.  There  is  for  each  a  distinct  func- 
tion. As  the  error  which  would  isolate  them  is  destructive 
of  unity,  so  also  the  error  which  would  identify  them  is 
destructive  of  freedom. 

They  are  distinguished  in  their  nature,  in  their  content, 
in  their  form  and  object  of  action,  and  in  their  institution. 
They  are  also  vested  in  different  persons.  To  identify 
one  with  another,  so  that  its  own  normal  action  should  be 
suspended  and  its  content  determined  by  another,  would 
subvert  the  development  of  the  whole. 

The  distinction  of  these  powers,  in  the  organization  of 
the  nation,  tends  toward  the  realization  of  freedom.  It 
is  in  the  formation  of  these  relations  that  the  freedom 
of  the  people  is  established.  When  the  organization  is 
imperfect,  when,  for  instance,  the  sole  power  is  vested  in 
a  popular  assembly  which  enacts  the  law,  and  then  enforces 
and  administers  order  under  it,  and  judges  all  cases  that 
arise  from  it,  the  result,  in  the  construction  of  a  power  of 
unrelated  and  unlimited  action,  is  an  absolutism.  And 

greatest  confusion  in  theory  and  disaster  in  practice.  It  is  refuted  alike  by  the 
facts  which  have  been  adduced  to  sustain  it,  by  logic  and  by  the  prudence  of  the 
state.  Instead  of  the  common  endeavor  toward  the  common  good,  it  would 
result  in  conflict,  and  the  antagonism  of  divided  powers,  and  instead  of  stable 
freedom  it  would  lead  to  anarchy." — R.  von  Mohl,  Encyklopadie  der  Staats- 
wi.ssenchaften,  p.  112.  See  also  R.  von  Mohl's  Lilerateur  und  Geschichte  der 
Staatswissenschaften,  vol.  i.  p.  397.  Stahl,  Philosophie  des  JRechts,  vol.  ii.  sec. 
2,  p.  198.  Hegel,  Philosophie  des  fiechts,  p.  272. 

The  interrelation  of  these  powers  in  the  constitution  of  England,  in  some  re- 
spects, is  one  of  its  best  results.  The  obligations  of  Montesquieu  and  of  Hegel 
V)  its  study  are  well  known.  It  is  to  be  noticed  that,  their  closer  interrelation  in- 
creases the  actual  power  and  capacity  of  the  Parliament,  through  its  ampler  or- 
ganization. Thus  the  Parliament  and  the  Crown  together  constitute  the  govern- 
ment ;  and  the  ministers  of  the  Crown  are  the  members  of  the  Parliament,  and 
the  judges  sit  also  as  members  of  the  Parliament,  but  with  no  vote,  and  the 
action  of  each  may  modify  but  does  not  control  the  action  of  the  other,  and 
the  realized  sovereignty  of  the  state  is  only  in  their  unity. 


178  THE  NATION. 

when  one  power  destroys  the  others,  or  assumes  their 
offices  and  capacities,  or  usurps  their  functions,  and  there 
remains  only  the  unrelated  and  unlimited  action  of  a  single 
and  separate  power,  the  consequence  is  again  the  same, — 
the  destruction  of  freedom.1  In  the  French  Revolution, 
the  legislative  destroyed  the  executive  power,  and  then 
the  executive  in  turn  destroyed  the  legislative,  and  this 
subversion  of  the  organization  of  the  whole  left  the  way 
open  to  an  imperialism. 

The  distinction  in  these  powers  is  illustrated  in  the  fact, 
that  while  in  each  there  is  a  field  for  the  highest  attain- 
ment, the  special  qualifications  for  each  are  different.  He 
who  excels  in  deliberation,  is  often  lacking  in  executive 
force,  and  a  speculative  breadth  of  thought  often  brings  a 
larger  hopefulness  than  is  justified  by  events ;  and  he  who 
is  clearest  and  firmest  in  action  may  often  be  without 
largeness  of  discourse ;  and  each  may  be  wanting  in  that 
fair  judicial  spirit  which  is  open  to  all  sides. 

These  powers  therefore  are  not  to  be  vested  in  the  same 
persons,  since  they  are  so  distinct  that  each  demands  for 
itself  an  exclusive  vocation,  and  their  offices  in  the  modern 
state  are  obviously  beyond  the  capacity  of  the  same  per- 
sons. Their  reference  in  their  offices  to  different  persons, 
who  are  resident  in  different  chambers,  is  itself,  in  the 
careful  maintenance  of  their  distinction,  a  guaranty  of 
freedom. 

These  powers  in  their  organization  cannot  be  too  strong 
nor  too  great,  since  they  have  their  origin  in  the  civil  and 

1  "  Through  Locke  and  Montesquieu,  the  great  truth  has  been  won,  and  it  con- 
stitutes their  undying  renown,  that  the  participation  of  the  different  ele- 
ments, in  the  exercise  of  the  power  of  the  state,  and  that  too  in  its  threefold 
functions,  is  the  foundation  of  civil  and  political  freedom;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
when  one  and  the  same  power,  whether  a  prince  or  a  popular  assembly:  alone 
exercises  all  functions,  despotism  is  the  inevita'ble  result."  —  Stahl,  Philosophie 
des  Rechts,  vol.  ii.  sec.  2,  p.  203. 

"  The  accumulation  of  all  powers,  legislative,  executive,  and  judicial,  in  the  same 
hands,  whether  of  one,  a  few,  or  many,  and  whether  hereditary,  self-appointed,  or 
elective,  may  justly  be  pronounced  the  very  definition  of  tyranny."  —  President 
Madison,  The  Federalist,  No.  xlvii. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  179 

political  organism ;  but  it  is  a  merely  formal  conception, 
which  is  the  premise  of  the  phrase  uan  equality  of 
powers."  It  assumes  their  division  and  then  aims  to 
establish  their  equilibrium,  regarding  them  as  external 
forces  to  be  pitted  against  each  other.  This  predication 
of  a  formal  equality,  as  if  between  mechanical  forces, 
fails  of  the  necessary  conception  of  the  nation  as  organic. 
The  phrase  has  no  real  significance  nor  consistent  appli- 
cation, and  it  has  to  learn  again  the  wisdom  well  nigh  as 
old  as  the  state  itself,  of  the  political  fable  of  the  belly 
and  the  members.  In  the  political  as  in  the  physical 
organism,  each  member  has  its  own  functions,  and  the 
full  and  normal  action  of  each  is  necessary  to  the  normal 
action*  of  the  other  and  the  normal  being  of  the  whole. 
The  representation  of  the  equality  of  these  powers  has 
moreover  no  historical  justification,  and  when  they  have 
been  thus  held  and  balanced  against  each  other,  the  bal- 
ance has  always  been  a  varying  and  disturbed  one,  until 
in  their  entire  separation,  which  the  proposition  assumes, 
an  inevitable  conflict  has  demonstrated  the  greater  strength 
of  some  one  power.  Thus  in  periods  when  the  people  is 
summoned  to  meet  insurrection  or  invasion,  the  strength 
of  the  executive  is  more  manifest,  while  in  the  subsequent 
construction  of  order  the  strength  of  the  legislature  ap- 
pears. In  these  succeeding  periods,  the  assumption  of  a 
formal  equality  of  powers  would  tend  to  produce  weakness 
or  conflict,  or  to  impair  and  retard  the  action  of  the  whole. 
In  the  prudence  of  the  state  it  is  not  the  feigned  or  the 
constructive  equality  of  the  powers  which  should  be  sus- 
tained, but  their  necessary^  correlation,  so  that  the  action 
of  each  may  promote  and  modify  and  not  subvert  the 
normal  action  of  the  other. 

The  representation  of  these,  powers  each  as  the  neces- 
sary restriction  to  the  other  is  imperfect.  It  has  its  premise 
in  the  distrust  of  power  as  in  itself  evil,  and  implies  not  a 


180  THE  NATION. 

spirit  of  unity  but  of  latent  hostility  and  dread  of  each 
other.  This  proposition,  as  Hegel  says,  makes  ill-will 
and  aversion  the  foundation  of  the  powers  of  the  state. 

The  result  is  also  negative ;  there  is  only  the  formation 
of  a  system  of  checks,  which  also  require  other  checks  with- 
out end.  The  object  set  before  each  power  is  to  reduce 
the  other  to  a  negation ;  their  construction  is  the  adoption 
of  the  economy  of  a  political  house  that  Jack  built.  Since 
each,  to  use  the  common  illustration,  is  the  offset  to  the 
other,  each  is  to  be  placed  as  a  makeweight  in  the  opposite 
scale,  but  the  balance,  if  evenly  held,  is  a  dead  weight.  It 
is  constructive  of  nothing.  Power  implies  energy,  and 
each  must  act  in  its  own  normal  conception,  and  is  not  to 
be  apprehended  primarily  as  restrictive  of  the  action  of  the 
other. 

The  character  of  these  powers,  and  of  their  necessary 
relation  to  each  other,  appears  in  their  relation  to  the  physi- 
cal force  of  the  nation,  —  its  military.  This  embraces  some 
of  the  most  important  principles  in  politics,  and  in  the 
administration  of  the  state. 

It  is  evident  at  the  outset,  that  the  organized  physical 
force  of  the  nation  does  not  constitute,  in  correspondence 
with  these  powers,  a  distinct  power  in  the  government, 
since  instead  of  being  constituted  in  the  moral  organism 
of  the  nation,  it  is  the  physical  force  wielded  by  the  nation, 
and  it  is  not  existent  in  a  sphere  in  which  it  is  self  deter- 
mined as  are  the  necessary  and  normal  powers,  and  the 
law  of  its  action  is  that  of  subordination. 

It  is  the  organized  might  of  tjie  whole,  —  the  nation  in  its 
unity  and  entirety ;  in  it  men  move  in  the  highest  personal 
spirit  and  freedom,  and  this  is  the  root  of  valor,  but  the 
many  as  one,  and  therefore  they  march  as  an  host,  and  with 
the  accordance  of  music,  and  the  ensigns  and  symbols  of 
the  unity  of  the  nation. 

But  its  determination  is  in  the  nation  in  its  political  or- 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  181 

ganism.  Its  members  are  citizens  before  they  are  soldiers ; 
if  they  were  not  citizens  they  would  not  be  soldiers.  Its 
action  is  in  conformance  to  a  strict  discipline.  The  au- 
thority which  immediately  directs  it  is  by  command. 

Of  the  normal  powers  of  the  nation,  it  is  evident  that 
the  judiciary  has  no  immediate  relation  to  the  military,  and 
the  military  has  none  to  it.  The  action  of  the  judiciary, 
is  only  through  a  constabulary. 

The  executive  is  the  head  of  the  physical  force  of  the 
nation,  —  the  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  and  navy. 
This  belongs  to  his  office  as  the  representative  of  the  unity 
of  the  nation,  and  of  its  external  sovereignty.  The  army 
and  navy  in  actual  service  must  also  have  a  single  com- 
mander-in-chief, since  it  cannot  be  directed  in  the  field 
by  a  council  or  an  assembly.  But  the  executive,  as  com- 
mander-in-chief, is  a  part  of  the  army,  and  in  that  capacity, 
as  entirely  in  identity  with  it  as  any  officer  or  private,  and 
thus  all  that  refers  to  the  army  and  navy  refers  to  him  as 
officially  included  in  it. 

If  now  this  power  of  the  executive  as  commander-in- 
chief  were  sole  and  supreme,  the  whole  force  of  the  na- 
tion would  be  constituted  no  longer  necessarily  in  con- 
formance to  law  which  is  the  normal  expression  of  the  will 
of  the  nation,  but  in  subjection  to  a  single  individual  will, 
and  the  result  would  be  the  institution  in  and  over  the 
nation  of  an  imperial  power.  There  would  be  in  the  formal 
constitution  only  a  formal  but  not  an  actual  limitation  to 
this  power,  since  on  this  assumption  it  could  suspend  the 
actual  operation  of  the  other  normal  powers.  The  power 
instituted  would  be  imperial,  whether  hereditary  or  elect- 
ive in  its  origin.  Its  possessors  might  succeed  each  other 
as  rapidly  and  irregularly  as  the  elective  emperors  in  the 
catalogues  of  the  annalists  of  Rome,  or  each  continue  for  a 
certain  term  of  years  or  for  lifo,  but  this  would  not  change 
the  character  of  their  power. 

The  subjection  of  the  physical  force  of  the  nation,  whose 


182  THE  NATION. 

principle  rightly  is  that  of  subordination,  to  a  single  individ- 
ual will  upon  whose  action  there  is  in  the  organization  of 
the  whole  no  limitation,  would  tend  to  the  subversion  of 
the  nation.  It  would  no  longer  exist  as  an  organism 
whose  subsistence  was  in  freedom,  but  there  would  be  the 
sway  of  an  individual  will,  to  whose  intent  there  was  no 
limitation. 

The  nation  is  constituted  not  in  subjection  to  a  single 
individual  will,  but  in  the  organization  of  and  the  obe- 
dience to  law.  Its  freedom  and  rights  have  their  institution 
in  positive  law.  Its  force  is  to  stand  in  and  maintain  the 
authority  of  law.  To  open  before  it  another  course  would 
be  the  construction  of  a  power  which,  in  the  exercise  of 
its  private  opinion  and  fiat,  would  be  above  and  separate 
from  the  law.  The  only  and  the  ultimate  authority  which 
the  nation  recognizes  is  the  law,  and  no  citizen,  nor  soldier, 
nor  lawgiver,  nor  ruler  can  be  above  and  separate  from  the 
law. 

The  clear  discrimination  of  the  military  from  the  civil 
and  political  powers,  appears  first  in  the  later  periods  of 
Roman  history.  In  so  far  as  it  places  the  soldier  before 
the  citizen,  or  makes  the  duty  of  the  soldier  precedent  to 
the  duty  of  the  citizen,  it  indicates  the  utter  destruction 
of  national  life  and  the  construction  of  a  physical  force 
which  had  no  ground  in  a  moral  order.  But  in  the  higher 
organization  of  the  nation,  the  relation  of.  the  military  — 
the  organized  physical  force  —  to  the  law  must  be  clearly 
defined.  The  imperialism  which  would  leave  it  to  the  ulti- 
mate and  unlimited  control  of  a  single  individual  will,  also 
separates  the  soldier  from  the  citizen,  and  is  necessarily  the 
subversion  of  the  nation  and  its  freedom. 

The  military  is  therefore  constituted  and  organized  by 
law.  Its  immediate  direction,  which  is  by  word  of  com- 
mand, is  necessarily  with  its  comniander  or  commanders, 
but  the  ultimate  direction  of  the  whole,  as  the  organized 
force  of  the  nation,  must  be  through  law,  and  by  no  com- 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  183 

id  can  it  be  carried  outside  of  the  law.     The  ultimate  di- 
ction then  must  be  with  that  power,  which,  in  the  normal 
>rocess,  alone  can  affirm  its  will  as  law.     The  legislature 
jrtainly  cannot  assume  executive  functions,  and  the  im- 
lediate  direction  is  necessarily  with  the  executive,  but  the 
tecutive  in  the  capacity  of  a  military  commander  is  in 
[entity  with  the  army  and  navy  and  simply  a  soldier  of 
the  nation,  although  in  rank  the  first  soldier.      The 
igislature  is  not  to  command  the  army,  since  its  action 
in  the  form  of  law  and  not  of  command,  but  since  the 
ssertion  of  the  will  of  the  nation  is  in  the  form  of  law 
id  not  of  command,  the  ultimate  direction  must  still  be 
dth  the  legislative  power,  and  the  military  can  never  be 
:ied  beyond  nor  removed  from  its  ultimate  control. 
This   object  has  been  guarded  and   secured  in   many 
rays,  and  its  constitutional  guaranties  and  securities  form 
amplest  illustration  of  the   relation  of  the  legislative 
>wer  to  the  military.     The  legislative  power  alone  can 
leclare  war1  and  as  implicit  in  this,  alone  can  conclude 
jace.     The  military  in  all  its  ranks,  and  in  the  person  of  a 
>rivate  or  captain  or  commander-in-chief,  is  immobile,  until, 
regards  the  operations  of  war,  it  is  called  to  act  by  the 
leclaration  of  the  Congress.      The  legislature  alone  can 
provide  for  the  common  defense,"  2  and  "  raise  and  sup- 
>rt  armies."  3    The  army  and  navy  has  no  existence  until 
the  Congress  shall  form  it.    The  legislature  alone  can  pro- 
vide for  the  "  organizing,  arming,  and  disciplining "  4  of 
the  army,  and  alone  can  "make  rules  for  the  government 
and  regulation  of  the  land  and  naval  forces."  5    To  its  gov- 
ernment and  regulations  the  whole  force  is  necessarily  sub- 
ject.    There  is  no  officer,  who  by  command  can  authorize 
their  violation,  and  no  member,  either  officer  or  private,  is 
exempt  from  their  operation,  and  as  a  soldier  the  executive 
is  subject  to  the  government  .and  regulations  which  the 
Congress  may  adopt.    The  President  certainly  is  the  exec- 

i  Art.  I.  sec.  8,  cl.  2.  «  Ibid.  cl.  1.  8  Ibid.  cl.  12. 

16. 


184  THE  NATION. 

utive  before  lie  is  the  commander-in-chief,  and  has  power 
which  is  external  to  the  latter  office ;  and  no  action  by 
Congress  in  reference  to  the  latter  can  encroach  upon  the 
sphere,  or  interfere  with  the  immediate  action  of  the  presi- 
dential office.  The  legislature  also  alone  can  provide  for 
the  calling  out  of  the  military  to  "  execute  the  laws,  suppress 
insurrections,  and  repel  invasions."1  It  alone  has  control 
"  by  exclusive  legislation,  in  all  cases,  over  forts,  maga- 
zines, arsenals,  and  dockyards."2  There  is  certainly  in 
the  executive  the  power  necessarily  in  every  nation,  to 
call  out  its  force  to  execute  laws,  to  suppress  insurrection, 
or  to  repel  invasion,  and  this  becomes  his  immediate  duty 
in  the  supreme  necessity,  but  the  constitutional  limitations 
to  this  authority  become  the  evidence  of  the  residence  of 
the  ultimate  direction  of  the  military  in  the  legislature. 
The  Congress  alone  can  maintain  the  army,  and  furnish 
the  means  and  munitions  of  war;  it  alone  can  "support 
armies,"  8  and  make  all  appropriations  for  their  sustenance, 
and  thus  the  very  condition  of  their  existence  is  in  the 
act  of  the  Congress,  and  in  the  house  which  is  in  the 
more  immediate  control  of  the  people.  It  is  thus  only  by 
an  act  of  the  legislature  that  any  soldier  of  the  nation, 
from  the  commander-in-chief  to  the  private,  may  obtain  a 
single  requisition  of  the  war-office,  or  own  a  sword  or 
carry  a  gun.  Then  also  the  appropriation  which  the  Con- 
gress may  grant  is  restricted  to  the  term,  when  it  again 
is  subject  to  the  election  of  the  people ;  "  no  appropriation 
for  that  use  shall  be  for  a  longer  time  than  two  years."4 

The  legislative  power  alone  has  the  ultimate  determina- 
tion, as  to  the  declaration  of  martial  law,  or  what  in  sub- 
stance corresponds  to  it,  the  suspension  of  the  habeas  cor- 
pus. Martial  law,  in  the  celebrated  charge  of  Cockburn, 

i  Art.  1.  sec.  8,  cl.  16.  2  Ibid.  cl.  17.  »  Ibid.  cl.  12. 

4  Ibid.    In  the  constitution  of  England,  to  which  this   clause  correspon< 
the  army  and  navy  in  this  respect  is  subject  to  the   Parliament,  and 
Mutiny  Bill,  by  which  the  army  is  organized,  is  limited  in  its  operation 
one  year,  and  is  annually  enacted  at  the  session  of  Parliament. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  185 

C.  J.,  is  defined  as  u  either  the  law  of  necessity,  which 
will  always  warrant  the  use  of  violence  by  a  state  in  self- 
defense,  although  the  imperative  nature  of  the  case  must 
be  shown  as  a  justification  of  the  act,  or  on  the  other  hand, 
military  law  to  which  soldiers  alone  are  liable,  and  which 
is  a  system  of  fixed  rules  laid  down  by  the  articles  of  war  ; 
beyond  this,"  he  adds,  "  there  is  no  such  law  in  existence 
as  martial  law,  and  no  power  in  the  Crown  to  proclaim 
it."  i 

The  power  to  establish  martial  law,  in  the  latter  sense, 
belongs  expressly  and  exclusively  to  the  Congress,  since  it 
alone  can  "  make  rules  for  the  government  and  regulation 
of  the  land  and  naval  forces."  The  power  in  the  former 
sense  must  belong  also  in  its  ultimate  determination  to  the 
Congress.  The  declaration  of  martial  law  in  this  sense, 
is  in  substance  the  same  as  the  suspension  of  the  habeas 
corpus,  since  each  is  the  formal  assertion  of  the  right  of 
the  nation  in  its  supreme  necessity,  the  one  being  the  form 
in  which  it  is  established  in  Germany,  France  and  Italy, 
while  the  other  is  its  form  in  England  and  the  United 
States. 

The  declaration  of  martial  law,  or  the  suspension  of  the 
habeas  corpus,  is  the  intermission  of  the  ordinary  course  of 
law,  and  of  the  tribunals  to  which  all  appeal  may  be  made. 
It  places  the  locality  included  in  its  operation  no  longer 
under  the  government  of  law.  It  interrupts  the  process 
of  rights  and  the  procedure  of  courts,  and  restricts  the 
independence  of  civil  administration.  There  is  substi- 
tuted for  these  the  intent  of  the  individual.  To  this 
there  is  in  the  civil  order  no  formal  limitation.  In  its 
immediate  action,  it  allows  beyond  itself  no  obligation  and 
acknowledges  no  responsibility.  Its  command  or  its  decree 
is  the  only  law ;  its  movement  may  be  secret,  and  its 

1  The  Queen  vs.  Nelson  and  Brand.  London :  1867.  Martial  law  is  defined 
as  "  the  will  of  the  general  who  commands  the  army."  — Digest,  p.  130.  Wai 
Department,  1866. 


186  THE  NATION. 

decisions  are  open  to  the  inquiry  of  no  judge  and  the  in- 
vestigation of  no  tribunal.  There  is  no  positive  power 
which  may  act  or  be  called  upon  to  act,  to  stay  its  caprice 
or  to  check  its  arbitrary  career,  since  judgment  and  execu- 
tion are  in  its  own  command,  and  the  normal  action  and 
administration  is  suspended,  and  the  organized  force  of 
the  whole  is  subordinate  to  it. 

The  power  which  appears  in  the  suspension  of  the 
habeas  corpus  is  a  necessary  right.  It  is  the  assertion  of 
the  right  in  the  supreme  necessity  of  the  state  and  in  the 
imminent  or  immediate  peril  of  the  people  to  suspend  the 
ordinary  process  of  rights.  It  is  the  right  of  the  nation 
which  is  precedent  to  the  rights  of  the  individual  or  the 
community.  The  inquiry  has  been,  as  to  its  residence, 
in  the  legislative  or  the  executive  power.  The  evidence 
of  its  ultimate  residence  in  the  former,  appears  in  its 
nature,  in  its  historical  institution,  and  in  the  conditions  in 
which  it  may  be  formed. 

It  is  a  right  of  the  nation  in  its  sovereignty.  But  there 
is  always  implied  in  sovereignty  the  conception  of  law,  and 
the  legislative  power  is  the  only  one  which  in  its  action  can 
affirm  its  determination  as  law.  Thus  Blackstone  says ; 
"sovereignty  and  legislation  are  convertible  terms,  and 
one  cannot  subsist  without  the  other."  This  power,  more- 
over, is  the  only  one,  the  nature  and  method  of  whose 
action  tends  in  itself  to  exclude  the  arbitrary.  Thus,  as 
the  act  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  in  its  highest 
expression,  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  this  is  not  wholly 
withdrawn  from  the  legislative  power.  Its  reference  to 
the  legislature  would  also  correspond  with  the  residence 
of  the  sovereign  rights  of  the  nation,  in  immediate  analogy 
with  it,  as  for  instance,  the  declaration  of  war. 

The  government  is,  morever,  in  its  normal  structure, 
a  government  of  laws.  If  then  the  legislature  by  its  own 
enactment  suspends  the  ordinary  action  of  the  government, 
there  is  still,  in  its  ultimate  conception,  the  continuance  of 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS. 


187 


iw,  and  as  the  power  from  which  the  law  proceeds  de- 
by  its  enactment,  the  suspension  and  then  the  resto- 

tion  of  the  habeas  corpus,  there  appears  still,  in  the  per- 
lent  and  substantial  order,  the  maintenance  of  law. 
act  is  divested  of  its  apparent  antagonism,  and  wears 
10  longer  the  appearance  of  a  civil  cataclysm.  But  to 
the  suspension  of  the  habeas  corpus  to  the  executive, 
seems  an  immediate  contradiction  to  the  normal  process  of 
the  nation  and  the  subversion  of  its  order. 

To  refer  this  office  to  the  executive  might,  in  fact, 
occasion  the  negation  of  the  other  normal  powers,  as  in 
their  process  they  became  subject  to  the  single  power  in 
whose  exclusive  control  this  act  was  placed,  and  by  whom 
it  might  alone  be  exercised.  The  form  might  remain,  and 
the  judicial  power  could  still  open  its  courts,  but  the  act  of 
the  executive  would  decide  if  any  might  seek  their  pro- 
tection, and  the  legislative  power  could  continue  its  ses- 
sions, but  all  laws  might  be  rendered  inoperative  by  the 
sole  actual  power,  the  executive,  —  "  the  will  of  the  com- 
mander-in-chief  as  general,  commanding  the  army."  It  is 
not  implied  that,  if  the  action  were  vested  in  the  executive 
power,  it  would  remove  the  other  powers,  since  this  would 
be  the  subversion  of  the  organization  of  the  nation,  and  the 
destruction  of  its  constitutional  order ;  but  this  would  not 
be  requisite  to  its  design,  since  the  act  of  the  executive, 
in  so  far  as  it  might  elect,  would  be,  in  fact,  an  absolute 
veto  upon  the  action  of  the  other  powers,  and  would  en- 
able the  executive  to  avoid  all  laws  enacted  by  the  legisla- 
ture and  all  decisions  of  the  judges.  . 

If,  moreover,  the  executive  alone  held  this  office,  it  would 
allow  an  individual  to  originate  a  condition  of  affairs,  in 
which  not  only  an  individual  will  could  act  without  control, 
but  the  will  would  be  the  same  which  originated  the  con- 
dition. The  act  and  the  whole  subsequent  power  resultant 
from  it,  would  be  referred  to  the  same  department  of  gov- 
ernment, and  that  resident  in  an  individual.  It  would  not 


188  THE  NATION. 

be  possible  for  a  people  to  construct  a  broader  highway  for 
a  tyrant  to  come  in.  It  would  concede  the  assumption  of 
all  power  beyond  all  actual  limitation,  to  an  individual. 
The  political  body  can  scarcely  contemplate  the  possibility 
thus,  of  the  accumulation  in  the  hands  of  one  person  of  all 
its  powers,  beyond  its  normal  control  and  in  the  cessation 
of  its  normal  process. 

The  whole  body  of  rights,  moreover,  in  which  freedom 
subsists,  both  civil  and  political,  is  in  the  process  of  positive 
law,  and  to  allow  its  suspension  to  an  individual  who  then 
could  alone  determine  the  continuance  of  the  period  of  that 
suspension,  is  not  only  what  the  nation  could  not  concede, 
but  it  is  a  power  which  no  member  of  the  nation  should 
possess,  since  the  inevitable  disaster  which  follows  all 
arbitrary  action  is  too  great  and  the  contingency  of  such 
action  in  the  weakness  and  the  aberration  of  the  individual 
is  too  near. 

The  highest  guaranty  of  the  freedom  of  the  nation,  and 
the  prudent  limitation  to  this  act  is  in  its  being  so  con- 
strued that  the  suspension  of  the  habeas  corpus  by  one 
power  shall  require  the  immediate  transfer  of  all  authority 
under  it  to  another  and  separate  power.  The  legislature 
in  suspending  the  habeas  corpus  does  not  assume  the  re- 
sultant authority,  but  refers  it  to  the  executive,  from  whom 
in  its  discretion,  it  may  withdraw  it. 

There  is  the  necessity  for  the  most  careful  and  yet  the 
most  ample  provision,  for  this  act  and  the  exercise  of  this 
right,  in  the  constitution.  It  is  a  right  of  the  nation  in  its 
sovereignty,  and  it  has  been  held  and  exercised  by  every 
historical  nation.  There  has  been  none  but  has  been 
called  to  pass  through  crises,  when  the  evil  forces  assailing 
its  life  and  unity  were  so  many,  or  their  attack  so  sudden, 
that  the  omission  to  exercise  it  would  be  the  abandonment 
of  the  plainest  political  obligation,  and  the  impotence  and 
crime  of  government  itself,  and  might  involve  the  ultimate 
and  lasting  subversion  of  all  rights.  And  yet,  since  the 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS- NORMAL  POWERS.      189 

legislature  cannot  always  act  with  the  immediate  energy 
which  may  be  demanded,  and  does  not  act  continuously, 
in  its  supreme  necessity,  in  the  actual  or  in  the  imminent 
peril  of  the  nation,  it  becomes  not  only  the  office  but  the 
imperative  duty  of  the  executive  to  assert  it.  But  the 
action  of  the  executive  in  its  assertion  is  here  subject  to 
certain  definite  limitations ;  firstly,  it  should  assume  under 
no  pretense  whatever  control  over  the  legislative  and  ju- 
dicial powers,  to  obstruct  their  organization,  or  to  approach 
the  persons  of  those  in  whom  these  powers  are  vested  by 
the  people  ;  and  secondly,  the  legislature  should  be  sum- 
moned, if  not  in  session,  it  may  be  by  the  act  itself,  and  the 
imperative  necessity  of  it  should  be  made  to  appear,  and 
its  justification  presented ;  and  when  the  latter  has  been 
rendered,  an  act  of  indemnity  may  be  granted  by  the  legis- 
lative power,  the  process  of  whose  action  has  been  sus- 
pended, and  the  further  conclusion  as  to  the  continuance 
of  the  suspension  of  the  habeas  corpus  revert  to  the  legis- 
lative power.1 

But  the  investiture  of  the  legislative  power  with  this 
right  illustrates,  also  finally,  the  residence  in  it,  of  the  ulti- 
mate direction  of  the  military,  since,  excepting  as  the  duty, 
with  definite  limitations,  is  for  the  moment  imposed  upon 
the  executive,  the  legislature  alone  can  call  the  military 
into  action.  There  can  be  between  these  normal  powers 
indeed  no  actual  conflict,  except  in  the  most  awful  crime, 

1  In  the  constitution  of  England,  the  Parliament  alone  has  the  power  to  sus- 
pend the  habeas  corpus,  but,  in  the  interval  of  its  session,  or  if  necessity  demanded 
sudden  and  secret  action,  during  its  session,  the  ministers  of  the  Crown  have 
exercised  the  power;  but  it  has  been  always  followed  by  the  solicitation  of  a 
bill  of  indemnity,  and  the  consent  of  the  Parliament  has  been  held  requisite  to 
justify  it,  and  since  the  statute  31  Charles  II.,  this  has  been  always  asked  and 
allowed. 

Sir  Edward  Coke  said  in  the  first  Parliament  of  Charles  I.,  of  the  king's  claim 
of  a  .right  to  imprison,  and  of  the  decision  of  the  judges,  "  What  is  it  but  tc 
declare  upon  record  that  any  subject  committed  by  such  absolute  command  may 
be  detained  in  prison  forever?  What  dotn  this  tend  to  but  the  utter  subversion 
of  the  choice,  liberty,  and  right  belonging  to  every  freeborn  subject  in  this  king- 
dom? A  Parliament  brings  judges,  officers,  and  all  men  into  good  order." 


190  THE  NATION. 

and  then,  in  the  destruction  of  the  organization  of  the  nation 
by  the  very  powers  called  to  act  in  its  constitutional  order, 
the  individual  is  thrown  back  upon  himself,  and  each  has 
only  to  remember  that  he  is  a  citizen  before  he  is  a  soldier, 
and  only  a  soldier  because  he  is  a  citizen. 

The  more  perfect  organization  of  the  legislative,  ex- 
ecutive and  judicial  powers  in  the  government  is  attained 
in  the  long  historical  development  of  the  people,  but  their 
institution  is  the  first  object  of  the  constitution. 

The  immediate  aim  is  that  they  shall  not  be  severed, 
so  that  there  shall  be  an  isolation  that  induces  alienation 
between  them,  and  that  they  shall  not  be  merged,  so  that 
their  separate  functions  shall  be  impaired,  but  their  con- 
struction is  to  conform  to  their  nature  and  correlation. 
Since  they  are  the  manifestation  of  that  which  is  immanent 
in  the  civil  and  political  organism,  the  constitution  may 
define,  but,  as  it  did  not  create,  it  cannot  change  their  nature 
nor  their  attributes.  They  are  not  the  product  of  a  polit- 
ical empiric,  and  the  ingenuity  of  no  individual  and  no  con- 
vention can  make  them  other  than  they  are.  The  change 
of  these  powers  in  the  being  of  the  nation  would  presume 
the  change  of  the  nature  of  the  reason  and  judgment  and 
will  in  man.  They  are  as  in  a  musical  notation,  where  the 
separate  notes  are  necessary  to  a  full  harmony,  and  yet 
these  notes  are  not  the  creation  of  art,  nor  could  art  change 
them,  and  it  is  thus  that  the  powers  of  the  state  are  de- 
scribed by  Shakespeare,  "as  converging  to  one  natural 
close,  like  music." 

The  constitution  is  to  describe  these  powers  and  their 
limitation,  but  their  strength,  in  which  each  is  involved 
with  the  other,  is  in  their  construction,  according  to  their 
unity  and  necessary  correlation,  and  their  formal  description 
apart  from  this  will  not  avail  much.  Their  action  can  be 
determined  in  the  words  of  President  Madison,  by  "  no  mere 
demarcation  upon  parchment."  Mr.  Hamilton  says,  also, 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  191 

*'as  all  external  provisions  are  found  to  be  inadequate,  the 
defect  must  be  supplied  by  so  contriving  the  interior  struc- 
ture of  the  government  as  that  its  several  constituent  parts 
may,  by  their  mutual  relations,  be  the  means  of  keeping 
each  other  in  their  places."  l 

The  sphere  of  each  in  its  limitations  is  to  be  so  construed, 
that  the  legislature  shall  not  execute  its  own  laws,  nor  de- 
cide in  a  conflict  of  rights  under  the  laws;  and  the  ex- 
ecutive shall  not  decree  its  own  will  as  law,  nor  decide  in 
a  conflict  of  rights ;  and  the  judiciary  shall  not  establish  its 
opinions  as  laws  constructive  of  the  political  order.  The 
legislature  alone  can  enact  laws,  and  its  act,  by  the  veto 
allowed  the  executive,  is  detained  and  restricted,  but  it  is 
not  imperatively  determined,  and  its  enactment  is  to  be 
thereafter  enforced  by  the  executive,  and  to  be  applied  by 
the  judiciary  in  judgment  on  cases  where  controversy  arises 
under  the  laws,  but  the  legislature  cannot  assume  the  ex- 
ecution of  laws,  nor  intervene  to  conduct  their  immediate 
administration ;  it  can  not  render  judgment  between  parties, 
nor  forbid  a  judicial  procedure  so  as  to  impair  the  vindica- 
tion of  rights,  and  the  only  case  which  can  be  brought  before 
it,  is  that  in  which  the  sejiate  is  constituted  as  a  court,  if 
the  people  shall  appear  With  charges  against  the  executive 
or  the  judges.  The  executive  is  to  execute  and  administer 
the  laws,  and  it  has  in  its  veto  the  qualified  restriction  of 
legislative  action,  and  is  to  communicate  to  the  legislature 
whatever  may  concern  the  state  of  the  nation,  but  it  can- 
not be  summoned  before  the  legislature,  except  on  the  pres- 
entation of  charges  for  its  impeachment.  The  judiciary  has 
its  province  most  clearly  defined,  since  its  action  is  in  judg- 
ment, and  judgment  is  only  of  force  as  the  expression  of 
conviction,  and  as  subject  to  no  external  control;  its 
decision  in  all  cases  is  final  of  those  cases,  and  in  its  final 
judication  is  open  to  no  revision. 

These  powers  in  their  organization  are  to  be  shaped 

l  The  Federalist;  No.  ii. 


192  THE  NATION. 

through  history,  in  the  patient  toil  which  will  care  most 
that  nothing  of  value  received  from  the  past  be  allowed 
to  perish,  but  will  hold  their  construction  in  any  moment 
as  very  far  from  perfect. 

The  interrelation  of  the  powers  is  to  be  so  denned,  that 
neither  shall  be  isolated  from  another  to  become  its  oppo- 
nent, nor  subjected  to  another  to  become  its  instrument. 
The  action  of  either,  when,  in  its  alienation,  it  becomes  the 
impediment  to  another,  will  result  in  the  weakness  of  the 
government,  and  tend  to  the  corruption  of  the  whole.  If 
their  interrelation  is  not  clearly  defined  and  established, 
there  will  be,  through  vagueness,  a  greater  risk  of  diver- 
gence, or  their  action  will  proceed  without  dignity  or  decent 
respect,  or  through  irregular  channels,  or  with  undue  influ- 
ences. 

There  will  be  the  resort  also  to  special  and  temporary 
devices  and  contrivances  by  the  one  power  to  hinder  or 
control  the  other.  While  the  mode  of  communication  be- 
tween them  is  not  clearly  established,  slight  and  irreg- 
ular means  will  be  introduced.  Then  the  condition  of 
affairs  is  ascertained  through  private  channels,  or  the 
casual  testimony  of  investigating  committees.  The  exec- 
utive becomes  only  the  man  at  the  other  end  of  the  avenue ; 
but  the  legislature  is  then  only  a  crowd  of  men  at  this 
end  of  the  avenue.  The  confusion  is  increased,  and  the 
relative  strength  of  the  powers  is  disturbed  by  the  neglect 
of  the  legislature  to  organize  a  civil  service,  so  that  the 
executive  has  a  vast  preponderance  given  to  it  in  certain  in- 
tervals. But  the  most  obvious  danger  is  in  the  too  wide 
separation  of  the  legislative  power  from  the  executive  and 
the  judiciary.  The  isolation  of  the  latter  from  the  legisla- 
tive power,  becomes  the  source  of  indifference  in  the  legisla- 
tive power  to  them,  and  then  of  their  weakness,  and  in  the  ' 
consequent  disorganization,  there  is  the  defect  of  the  whole. : 
Thus  Stahl  says,  "  the  complete  isolation  of  the  executive  j 
strips  it  of  everything  and  makes  it  the  tool  of  the  legisla-  j 
tive  power." 


THE  NATION   AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  193 

The  high  offices  of  a  minister  of  a  department  of  admin- 
istration, are  imperfectly  organized.  Their  growth  and 
number  are  beyond  the  provision  of  the  constitution,  and 
are  to  be  determined  in  the  historical  necessity  of  the  state. 
While  their  immediate  relation  and  administrative  respon- 
sibility is  to  the  executive,  they  are  more  than  merely  its 
registrars.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  ministers  of  the 
executive,  in  conformance  to  some  modern  political  consti- 
tutions, should  sit  in  the  chambers  of  the  legislature,  but 
without  a  vote,  and  a  member  or  attorney  of  the  judiciary 
should  also  sit  with  them,  but  without  a  vote.  This  might 
improve  legislation,  since  it  would  give  to  the  legislature  a 
higher  strength  in  its  ampler  and  more  complex  organiza- 
tion, and  aid  toward  the  removal  of  the  breach  between 
the  powers,  and  open  clear  and  definite  means  of  com- 
munication between  them,  instead  of  the  vague  and  in- 
definite, and  therefore  perilous  ways  which  now  alone  exist. 

The  legislative,  executive  and  judicial  powers,  in  their 
formal  organization,  constitute  the  government. 

The  legislature  is  the  precedent  power  in  the  govern- 
ment. Since  the  government  is  of  law,  and  the  assertion 
of  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  is  in  positive  law,  the 
power  which  can  alone  constitute  its  determination  as  law, 
!  in  its  relation  to  the  other  powers,  is  necessarily  precedent. 
[t  is  not,  that  these  powers  do  not  each  subsist  immediately 
I  in  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation,  and  it  is  not,  that  the  other 
Dowers  are  subordinate,  since  the  action  of  eachT  in  its  own 
jphere,  can  neither  be  directed  nor  determined  in  its  con- 
;ent  by  another ;  but  in  the  normal  process  the  inception 
)f  civil  and  political  action  is  in  the  legislature.  It  is 
lot  the  power  which  executes  the  law,  nor  the  power 
vhich  interprets  the  law  in  adjudging  cases  under  the 
aw,  but  the  power  which  in  its  nature  can  enact  its  will 
is  law,  that  in  the  formative  process  is  precedent. 

The  legislative  power  has  the  definition  of  its  sphere  of 

13 


194  THE   NATION. 


action  and  the  enumeration  of  its  special  powers  in  the 
formal  constitution,  but  the  objects  of  its  action  exist  only 
in  the  change  and  circumstance  of  history.  It  alone  is  con- 
structive, and  alone  can  act  with  a  reconstructive  power 
in  the  historical  crises  which  come  to  every  nation,  for 
which  it  is  not  in  the  capacity  of  a  formal  constitution 
to  provide,  and  for  which  it  could  no  more  prescribe  than 
it  could  predict  the  circumstance  of  history,  —  epochs  which 
no  individual  prescience  could  anticipate  and  no  expiring 
convention  could  forestall.  The  political  course  is  not  to 
be  shaped  by  an  executive  decree,  for  this,  apart  from 
law,  is  authority  for  no  man,  nor  by  a  judicial  decision, 
for  this  has  only  a  revisionary  power,  but  in  the  process  of 
law,  and  therefore  by  the  power  which  alone  can  enact  its 
will  as  law.  The  recognition  of  authority,  in  the  formative 
course  of  the  nation,  in  any  other  form  than  as  law  is 
anarchic,  and  is  the  inauguration  of  an  imperial  power. 
It  is  to  law  alone  that  every  individual,  both  the  power 
that  makes  and  the  power  that  executes  the  law,  is  subject. 

The  distinction  between  the  constitution  and  the  laws  is 
indeed  fundamental ;  but  it  is  to  be  considered  that  the 
formation  of  the  constitution  is  in  its  nature  a  legislative 
act,  as  the  constitution,  when  formed,  is  the  supreme  law,  and 
every  amendment  is  also  in  its  inception  a  legislative  act. 

The  legislative  power  is  regulative  of  the  order  and 
organization  of  the  other  powers,  in  so  far  as  this  is  not 
defined  by  the  constitution,  but  is  left  to  be  determined  in 
the  continuous  process  of  the  state.  The  other  powers,  in- 
deed, subsist  with  it  in  the  organic  constitution.  It  did 
not  create  them,  and  it  can  neither  nullify  them,  nor  assume 
their  functions.  Because  they  are  subject  to  its  action  as 
law,  it  does  not  follow  that  they  are  subordinate  to  it, 
since  it  also  is  subject  to  law  ;  this  does  not  reduce  the 
executive  simply  to  an  instrument  of  its  intent,  and  the 
judiciary  to  a  registrar  of  its  opinions.1 

1  "  To  prevent  collision  in  the  action  of  the  government,  without  impairing 


THE  NATION   AND    ITS  NORMAL   POWERS.  195 

There  is  also,  in  the  representative  structure  of  the  legis- 
lative power,  a  vested  authority,  in  relation  to  the  other 
powers,  which  they  have  not  to  each  other  nor  to  it.  Thus, 
on  an  alleged  violation  of  his  trust,  it  may  summon  an 
executive  or  a  judicial  officer  before  it,  and  if  a  high 
crime  or  misdemeanor  is  proven,  he  may  be  convicted 
by  it ;  but  no  other  power  has  a  corresponding  office, 
and  it  alone  can  judge  its  own  members,  and  determine 
their  qualifications.  It  also  holds  those  who  are  to  fill  the 
i  judiciary  subject  to  its  confirmation,  and  a  vacancy  in  the 
executive,  in  certain  circumstances,  may  be  filled  by  it, 
but  if  any  occur  in  itself,  it  must  be  referred  immediately 
ito  the  people.  It  also  is  to  receive  from  the  people  the 
announcement  of  an  election  of  the  President,  and  to 
induct  him  into  office. 

The  more  perfect  structure  of  the  legislature  has  been 
jthe  index  of  the  progress  of  the  political  spirit  of  the  peo- 
ple. In  the  higher  political  development  its  organization 
[has  become  ampler  and  it  has  embodied  more  varied  ele- 
ments of  strength.  This  has  been  the  principal  aim  of 
modern  political  constitutions.  The  effort  has  been  also  to 
make  it  more  free,  and  less  subject  to  repressive  legisla- 
tive codes  and  rules,  without  impairing  its  power  of  com- 
ing to  a  conclusion.  But  the  construction  of  the  legisla- 
I'tive  power,  its  history,  its  order,  its  system  of  rules,  the 
! number  of  which  it  should  consist,  the  form  of  election, 
the  duration  of  office,  the  dual  system  of  houses,  and  the 
:like,  is  a  special  study.1 

,  :he  independence  of  the  departments,  all  discretionary  power  was  vested  in  the 
legislature.  Without  this,  each  would  have  had  equal  right  to  determine  what 
•  Dowers  were  necessary  and  proper  to  carry  into  execution  the  powers  vested  in 
t,  which  could  not  fail  to  bring  them  into  dangerous  conflicts." — Calhoun's 
Works,  vol.  i.  p.  346. 

Bracton  said,  "  The  king  ought  not  to  be  subject  to  man,  but  to  God  and  the 

aw."    Christian  cites  Year  Books,  19  Henry  TI.  31:  "  The  law  is  the  highest 

nheritance  which  the  king  has:  for  by  the  law  he  himself  and  all  his  subjects 

ire  governed,  and  if  there  was  no  law  there  would  be  no  king  and  no  inheritance." 

1  Bluntschli  says,  but  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  the  executive  is  regarded  as  in- 


196  THE  NATION. 

The  executive  is  the  power  to  which  belongs  the  exe- 
cution of  the  laws  and  the  administration  of  affairs.  It  is 
in  immediate  direction  of  all  the  departments  of  adminis- 
tration. It  is  the  head  of  the  army  and  navy,  and  in 
command  of  them  for  internal  order  and  external  defense. 
But  the  name  —  the  executive  —  imperfectly  indicates  the 
character  and  dignity  of  the  office  and  even  its  relation  to 
the  other  powers.  While  it  is  entirely  in  subjection  to 
law,  and  cannot  pass  beyond  the  law,  it  far  transcends 
the  office  of  a  merely  executory  instrument  of  the  legis- 
lature. Nor  can  it  be  described  even  as  the  exclusive 
executive,  since  in  the  ordinary  course  of  affairs  the 
law  is  not  executed,  but  is  pronounced  and  applied  by 
all  concerned,  or  more  strictly,  the  law  may  be  said  to  exe- 
cute itself,  since  the  proclamation  is  presumed  to  be  iden- 
tical with  the  execution.1  The  name  still  less  indicates  its 
relation  to  the  judicial  power,  since  the  execution  of  the 
judgment  of  the  court  is  in  the  immediate  authority  of 
the  court,  which  acts  through  its  own  constabulary,  and  it 
is  only  in  its  discretion  that  it  may  call  for  the  aid  of  the 
executive.  While  imperfectly  denoting  the  relation  to 
these  powers,  the  name  is  itself  dry  and  formal,  and  sug- 
gestive rather  of  a  pedantic  and  scholastic  distinction; 
there  is  in  the  office  a  far  larger  conception  that  embraces 
higher  duties  and  trusts. 

It  is  representative  of  the  unity  of  the  nation,  and  its 
unity  in  personality.  It  is  therefore  vested  in  one  person. 
It  is  representative  of  the  majesty  of  the  nation,  and  it  is 
to  preserve  and  protect  and  defend  the  constitution  in  the 
unbroken  supremacy  of  law.  It  is  representative  of  the 

tegral  with  the  legislative  power,  "  Die  gesetzgebende  Gewalt  bestimmt  die  Stats- 
und-Rechts-'ordnung  selbst,  und  ist  ihr  hochster,  das  ganze  Volk  umfassender 
Ausdruck.  Alle  andern  Gewalten  iiben  ihre  Functionen  innerhalb  der  beste- 
henden  Stats-und-Rechts-ordnung  in  einzelnen  concreten  und  wechselenden 
Fallen  aus."< — Allgemeines  Statreckt,  vol.  i.  p.  452. 

1  The  signature  of  the  executive  is  always  presumed  to  be  upon  a  law,  and 
indicates  something  of  its  necessary  relation  to  the  legislature,  and  while  it  is 
only  a  form,  it  yet  has  a  significance,  and  would  be  insisted  on  by  one  who 
guards  the  executive  office. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  197 

organized  might  of  the  nation,  the  power  of  the  nation  in 
its  totality.  It  is  therefore  the  head  of  the  army  and 
navy.  It  is  representative  of  the  nation  in  its  external 
sovereignty,  and  the  nation  acts  immediately  through  it, 
in  its  relation  to  other  nations.  It  is  through  it  alone 
that  all  communication  with  other  nations  proceeds,  and 
it  alone  is  to  receive  ministers  and  embassies  from  them, 
and  is  to  send  its  own  to  them.  It  is  representative  of 
the  nation  in  its  unity,  beyond  all  interests  and  sections 
and  factions  and  parties,  and  is  in  identity  with  none  of 
these,  but  in  immediate  relation  to  the  people  in  its  entirety. 
It  is  representative  of  the  relation  of  the  nation  to  every 
person  who  is  a  .member  of  the  nation.  This  has  had 
no  higher  exemplar  in  the  life  of  nations,  than  President 
Washington  and  President  Lincoln.  They  kept  a  conscious 
relation  to  all,  and  they  heard  the  petitions  of  all  the  people. 
In  the  conscious  life  of  a  free  people,  it  is  a  power  which 
is  not  left  to  be  determined  —  if  that  word  may  be  applied 
in  this  connection — by  any  accident,  and  it  is  not  restricted 
to  a  single  line  of  family  descent,  but  he  who  is  called  to 
it  is  to  be  called  of  the  whole  people.  There  is  no  form 
in  the  barbaric  constitutions,  and  no  type  drawn  from  the 
confusion  of  the  changing  conditions  of  the  feudal  age  so 
noble  as  this,  in  which  the  nation  is  manifested  in  its 
i  moral  being,  and  no  imperialism  has  such  elements  of 
strength  as  this,  in  which  there  is  the  representation  of  the 
I  nation  in  its  conscious  purpose,  and  in  the  recognition  of 
!  the  majesty  of  law.  The  inauguration  of  its  power,  is 
I  the  expression  of  the  conscious  determination  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  in  the  fulfillment  of  law. 

It  is  to  guard  the  unity  of  the  nation,  and  to  protect  the 
people  and  the  land  in  all  perils.  Since  the  judicial  power 
is  withdrawn  by  its  process  from  immediate  action,  and 
the  legislative  power  is  without  the  continuous  action  and 
i  the  capacity  for  immediate  action,  which  some  sudden  or 
imminent  peril  to  the  nation  migHt  demand,  it  becomes  its 


198 


THE   NATION. 


duty  and  power,  in  the  emergency,  in  the  defined  limits  of 
the  constitution,  to  suspend  the  habeas  corpus,  and  to  call 
out  the  armed  force  of  the  nation  ;  but  the  provision  for 
this  act  is  to  be  so  clear  that  it  may  not  become  in  itself 
a  source  of  peril. 

It  represents  the  might  of  the  whole  in  its  relation  to 
the  individual,  and  in  it  the  nation  stands  forth  in  its  unity 
on  the  approach  of  insurrection  from  within  or  invasion 
from  without.  It  holds  for  the  individual  the  power  of 
pardon,  and  this  is  always  its  prerogative. 

There  has  been  through  all  the  conflicts  of  history  the 
exhibition  of  no  quality  in  the  sovereignty  of  nations, 
which  does  not  belong  to  it,  and  there  has  been  no  tyranny 
but  is  alien  to  it.  Its  authority  is  in  the  supremacy  of  law 
and  its  power  is  in  the  majesty  of  the  nation. "  The  phrase 
is,  the  king  can  do  no  wrong,  and  it  has  a  deep  signifi- 
cance in  the  assertion  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  nation  as 
subsisting  in  its  being  as  a  moral  person ;  and  every  act 
which  does  not  proceed  from  this,  or  is  in  variance  with 
this,  is  unkingly.1 

The  construction  of  the  executive  power  was  widely 
considered  in  the  formation  of  the  constitution.  The  con- 
ditions of  its  organization  were,  that  he  who  was  called  to 
it  should  be  called  from  the  whole  people,  and  that  it 
should  be  left  to  no  accident.  There  was  the  suggestion 
of  various  forms,  as  its  entrustment  to  an  elect  council, 
or  to  a  person  elected  from  the  legislature  and  responsible 
to  that,  and  its  duration  for  life  or  for  different  terms. 
The  proposition  adopted  was  its  investure  in  one  person, 
elected  by  a  college,  which  was  elected  by  the  people; 
and  the  term  of  office,  open  to  a  reelection,  was  four 
years.  The  project  of  an  electoral  college  failed,  continu- 
ing only  as  a  form,  and  it  remains  as  an  illustration  of  the 
want  of  inherent  strength  in  a  constitutional  form  which 

1  "  He  that  does  injustice  dishonours  the  king."  —  Samuel  Mulford,  1714 
Doc.  Hist,  of  N.  Y.  vol.  iii.  p.  371. 


THE  NATION    AND  ITS  NORMAL   POWERS.  199 

does  not  correspond  to  the  purpose  of  the  people,  since 
in  every  election  some  name  has  been  immediately  before 
the  people.  This  course  alone  has  an  historical  justifica- 
tion. It  has  been  truly  said,  that  the  people  can  best 
appreciate  great  services  to 'the  nation,  and  great  qualities 
in  action,  and  they  are  without  the  envy  and  the  prejudice 
of  the  narrow  circles  of  cliques  and  parties,  and  no  sepa- 
rate interest  as  of  a  certain  family  or  a  class  prevails  with 
them,  and  they  are  indifferent  to  the  private  ambitions  of 
great  men. 

The  executive  power  in  its  organization  is  vested  in  one 
person,  and  no  other  form  is  consistent  with  it.  The  plan 
of  an  executive  council  was  sustained  by  Milton  in  his 
description  of  a  free  state.  It  was  the  constitution  of  the 
executive  in  the  triumvirate  of  Rome ;  but  its  inter- 
nal dissension  illustrated  the  defect  of  a  plural  system. 
It  was  established  in  France,  in  the  directory  of  five  ;  but 
the  want  of  unity  and  decision,  and  the  variance  in  this 
collegial  rule,  opened  the  way  to  the  power  of  the  First 
Consul.  There  is  an  inevitable  weakness  in  the  assumption 
of  executive  power  by  a  college,  as  a  senate  or  parliament. 

The  higher  organization  of  the  executive  power  comes 
in  the  historical  development  of  the  people,  giving  to  it 
greater  strength,  and  a  more  perfect  correlation  to  the 
other  necessary  powers  in  the  nation,  and  its  better  con- 
ception is  gathered  from  the  work  of  those  who  fill  it  best. 

The  judicial  power  has  its  sphere  in  the  interpretation 
and  application  of  laws  in  a  conflict  of  rights.  It  renders 
judgment  in  a  controversy  in  law  between  man  and  man, 
and  man  and  the  state.  Its  conclusion  is  an  opinion  in 
pursuance  of  which  decision  is  made,  which  is  final  in 
respect  to  the  status  of  the  parties  concerned.  In  order 
to  its  action,  a  case  must  be  laid  before  it,  and  judgment 
is  given  between  parties  in  dispute.  Its  procedure  is  in 
a  court. 


200  THE  NATION. 

It  is  withdrawn  from  the  military,  and  can  execute  its 
decisions  only  by  a  constabulary.  "  The  judiciary,"  says 
Mr.  Hamilton,  uhas  no  influence  over  either  the  purse  or 
the  sword ;  no  direction  either  of  the  strength  or  of  the 
wealth  of  the  society ;  and  can  take  no  active  resolution 
whatever.  It  may  truly  be  said  to  have  neither  force  nor 
will,  but  only  judgment." 

Its  decision  is  not  a  law,  but  a  precedent  from  which 
its  subsequent  action  in  all  corresponding  cases  is  pre- 
sumed, but  by  which  it  is  not  imperatively  determined. 
Its  decision  is  a  finality,  in  the  case  considered,  and  is 
beyond  even  its  own  revision.  It  would  be  a  digression 
to  inquire  into  the  nature  and  philosophy  of  a  precedent 
in  law ;  but  as  the  conception  of  rights  is  widened  in  the 
increasing  freedom  of  the  people,  and  courts  change,  and 
the  wisdom  of  the  application  of  the  law  is  not  perfect  and 
does  not  reach  a  finality,  it  may  follow  that  precedents  are 
annulled  or  avoided  with  the  process  of  time,  as  with  the 
action  of  courts ;  and  yet,  in  a  conflict  of  rights,  a  prece- 
dent is  rightly  presumed  steadfast,  and  to  settle  affairs  for 
all  time. 

The  inquiry  of  special  importance  as  to  the  judicial 
power  is  in  reference  to  its  relation  to  the  other  powers, 
and  the  political  sphere  which  has  been  assumed  for  it. 

The  organization  of  this  power,  in  conformance  to  its 
nature  and  end,  is  judicial.  Its  structure  is  that  of  a  bench 
of  judges,  and  not  of  a  representative  order.  It  is  estab- 
lished as  a  court,  and  not  as  an  assembly  of  the  people. 
If  it  were  invested  with  positive  political  power,  it  would 
necessarily  be  formed  as  representative  in  the  political 
constitution ;  if  it  were  invested  with  ultimate  political 
power,  it  would  be  formed  from  and  of  the  whole 
political  people.  In  the  election  of  those  who  were  to  ex- 
ercise its  office,  the  people  would  not  be  restricted  to  a 
single  profession  or  class,  as  that  which  is  variously 
described  as  solicitors,  proctors,  attorneys,  counsellors, 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  201 

lawyers,  but  it  would  be  composed  from  the  whole  people, 
and  from  them  there  would  be  drawn  scholars  and  artisans, 
and  farmers,  and  tradesmen,  and  economists,  who,  no  less 
than  lawyers,  have  their  sphere  in  the  process  of  the  polit- 
ical people,  and  are  to  act  in  its  decision. 

The  concession  to  the  judiciary  of  an  ultimate  decision 
in  the  political  sphere,  would  be  the  reference  of  the  des- 
tination of  the  state  to  a  regime  of  lawyers,  and,  as  it  is 
now  organized,  to  a  power  which  is  not  responsible  to  the 
people,  and  holds  its  position  for  life,  and  whose  action  is  a 
precedent  which  is  presumed  to  be  final  and  beyond  rever- 
sal, and  whose  opinion  is  a  decision  from  which  there  is  no 
appeal.  Then  the  historical  progress  of  the  people  would 
be  traced  no  longer  in  the  better  institution  of  rights,  and 
the  broader  freedom,  and  the  more  varied  organization  of  its 
powers,  but  in  judicial  decisions  rendered,  it  may  be,  upon 
feigned  issues  and  pronounced  over  contending  litigants. 
Then  the  crises  in  the  political  life  of  the  people  would 
await  for  their  event,  the  process  by  which  a  case  could 
be  made  up  and  brought  into  court,  and  the  development 
of  the  state  would  be  shaped  by  an  exclusive  profession  or 
class,  and  that  one  which  is  of  all  the  most  superstitious, 
and  superstitious  of  the  letter.  It  is  the  poet,  and  not  the 
historian  of  laws,  who  says  that  freedom  broadens  from 
precedent  to  precedent. 

The  nation  also  exists  in  the  conditions  of  an  historical 
development,  and  therein  is  the  on-going  of  its  power, 
but  the  action  of  the  judiciary  is  retrospective.  It  is 
invested  with  a  revisionary  but  not  a  constructive  power. 
It  can  only  consider  a  case  which  is  brought  before  it,  and 
pass  judgment  upon  that.  It  is,  in  the  rendering  of  judg- 
ment on  a  case,  to  say  what  the  law  is,  but  not  to  say 
what  the  law  shall  be.  The  formative  political  power  be- 
longs only  to  the  power  which  is  representative  of  the 
political  will. 

The  form  and  procedure  of  thfi  judiciary  also  precludes 


202  THE  NATION. 

its  exercising  an  ultimate  political  determination  of  the 
destination  of  the  political  people.  It  is  incapable  of  the 
functions  which  the  proposition  demands.  "  It  is,"  says 
Kent,  "  to  determine  the  supreme  law  whenever  a  case  is 
judicially  before  it."  The  fact  that  its  action  is  limited 
to  the  case  before  it,  is  the  evidence  that  this  power  is 
beyond  its  capacity.  The  vastest  changes  and  crises  might 
follow  in  swift  succession,  and  yet  give  rise  to  no  case, 
nor  involve  in  a  special  controversy,  contending  litigants. 
The  actual  course  of  events  would  not  await  the  constant 
construction  and  conclusion  of  feigned  issues,  and  yet,  the 
judiciary  is  silent,  until  the  consideration  of  a  case  opens 
its  lips.  These  feigned  issues  would  also  render  the  house 
of  judges  only  the  moot  court  for  the  examination  and 
trial  of  political  theories. 

The  construction  of  feigned  issues  by  the  legislature, 
which  it  is  to  refer  to  the  judiciary,  is  indicative  of  the 
bias  of  jurists,  and  not  the  constructive  grasp  of  statesmen. 
It  would  be  as  consistent,  in  the  difference  of  opinions  by 
the  judges,  to  refer  the  conclusion  to  the  legislature.  It 
would  involve  peril,  also,  in  the  subversion  of  the  integral 
character  of  the  legislature,  since,  while  it  might  avail  as  a 
temporary  device,  there  must  be  but  one  power  to  enact 
laws,  and  this  power  can  suffer  no  evasion  of  its  responsibility. 

The  reference  of  this  office  to  the  judiciary  is  inconsistent 
with  the  normal  institution  of  law  in  the  political  organism. 
In  the  political  order  law  subsists  in  the  consciousness  of 
the  political  people.  The  determination  of  the  individual 
must  be  the  assertion  of  a  conscious  power,  and  obe- 
dience to  the  law  must  be  a  conscious  act.  Therefore  the 
deliberation  of  a  political  assembly  is  public,  and  the  law 
is  published  and  presumed  to  be  in  the  knowledge  of  all. 
But  the  formation  of  judicial  opinions  is  private,  and  the 
study  of  these  opinions  and  precedents,  and  the  examina- 
tion of  the  decisions  of  courts,  demands  the  prolonged  and 
laborious  research  of  an  exclusive  profession.  To  allow  to 


THE  NATION   AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  203 

these  opinions  and  precedents  the  ultimate  determination 
of  the  political  order,  is  to  dissever  it  from  its  basis  in  the 
conscious  spirit  of  the  political  people.  It  is  as  if  the  laws 
were  to  be  hidden  in  costly  and  obscurely  written  tomes, 
and  required  the  interpretation  of  a  special  craft.  They 
would  be  as  completely  withdrawn  from  the  conscious  life 
of  the  people,  as  the  laws  of  the  tyrant  which  were  recorded, 
but  so  high  that  none  of  the  people  could  read  them. 

The  special  scope  of  the  judiciary  is  indicated  also  by 
the  qualities  demanded  for  it  in  contrast  with  the  work  of 
the  statesman.  These  qualities  can  only  be  described  as 
judicial.  The  breadth  of  thought  and  the  prescience  of  the 
statesman  have  not  in  the  judiciary  their  immediate  field. 

But  the  opinions  of  the  judiciary  cannot  be  regarded  as 
the  power  determinative,  in  its  ultimate  action,  of  the  des- 
tination of  the  state,  nor  accepted  as  the  finality  in  its 
course,  since  this  would  be  inconsistent  with  its  existence 
in  the  realization  of  the  freedom  of  the  people.  To  make 
the  opinions  of  the  judiciary  a  finality  in  the  political 
order,  would  fetter  the  free  spirit  of  the  people,  confining 
it,  not  in  the  assertion  and  recognition  of  law,  as  the 
determination  of  the  organic  will,  but  in  the  conformance 
to  a  mere  legality.  The  past  by  its  precedents  would  im- 
pose its  authority  upon  the  present.  The  energy  of  the 
people  perishes  when  precedents  become  the  substitute  for 
the  action  of  a  living  will  and  the  strength  of  a  living  spirit. 
The  Israel  which  once  had  kings  and  prophets,  has  then 
only  Rabbis  of  the  law.1 

1  "  The  law  spoke  to  each  man  individually,  bound  him  to  his  fathers,  bound 
him  to  those  who  should  come  after  him ;  it  united  him  to  every  member  of 
his  nation.  Suppose  that  law  reduced  to  a  mere  collection  of  letters,  written  on 
stone  or  in  a  book,  yet  invested  with  all  its  traditional  sacredness;  suppose  it 
changed  from  the  witness  of  a  nation's  vitality,  into  the  witness  of  a  glory  that 
has  departed ;  suppose  a  set  of  men  possessing  hereditary  claims  to  reverence, 
untiring  diligence,  much  acuteness,  devoting  themselves  to  the  task  of  expound- 
ing this  law,  —  suppose  this  and  you  have  probably  the  best  conception  you 
can  get  of  the  Rabbinical  casuistry,  and  its  immediate  influence  upon  the  min^ 
of  a  people,  crushed  and  fallen,  but  full  of  grand  memories,  seldom  quite  de- 
lerted  by  an  inspiring  hope." — Inaugural  Lecture,  by  the  Rev.  F.  D.  Maurice 
Cambridge,  1866. 


204  THE   NATION. 

There  is  a  proposition  connected  with  this  which  refers 
to  the  judiciary,  the  preservation  of  the  constitution,  as 
an  exclusive  province,  regarding  its  final  interpretation  as 
obligatory  upon  the  other  powers,  and  placing  it  as  an 
arbiter  over  them,  to  confine  them  in  their  constitutional 
limitations.  This  also  is  inconsistent  with  its  character, 
and  is  an  office  which  belongs  to  no  separate  power,  and 
involves  a  misconception  of  the  relation  of  each  and  of  the 
whole.  It  is  in  its  province  to  interpret  the  law  in  every 
controversy  in  rights  which  is  brought  before  it,  and  it 
may  hold  a  law  invalid  in  a  certain  case,  because  in  con- 
flict with  the  constitution  which  is  also  a  law,  and  to  which 
every  enactment  of  the  legislature  must  yield.  Its  decis- 
ion is  final  only  of  the  case  in  controversy,  although  held 
to  apply  to  all  corresponding  cases.  Its  decision  is  to  be 
received  by  the  executive  and  by  the  legislature  with  the 
highe§t  deference,  but  it  is  to  be  accepted  by  them,  in  their 
action,  only  in  so  far  as  their  judgment  may  approve  and 
confirm  it. 

The  judiciary  would  also  fail  as  a  final  arbiter,  since  no 
power  is  constituted  to  act  as  arbiter  over  the  others,  but 
each  is  to  conform  to  its  own  normal  sphere,  and  the  avoid- 
ance of  conflict  is  to  be  found  only  in  their  interior  struc- 
ture and  their  interrelation  in  the  whole.  This  would  also 
impose  upon  it  a  duty  which  it  could  not  fulfill ;  it  would 
refer  the  final  arbitrament  to  the  inherently  weaker  power. 
It  is  withdrawn  from  the  military,  and  has  the  least  ability 
to  enforce  its  decisions.  Its  endeavor  would  be  futile, 
since  the  mandamus  of  the  court,  if  issued  to  the  President 
or  the  Congress,  would  of  necessity  be  disregarded. 

To  ascribe  this  province  to  the  judiciary  and  to  impose 
its  decision  upon  the  legislative  power  as  a  finality  would 
make  the  latter  subordinate.  The  judiciary  would  control 
the  legislature,  and  its  opinions  might  become  the  substi- 
tute for  laws  in  the  political  order,  and  its  decisions  super- 
sede legislation.  It  would  be  as  consistent  to  give  the 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS   NORMAL  POWERS.  205 

legislature  the  revision  in  certain  cases  of  the  opinions  of 
the  judiciary,  and  to  make  that  revision  obligatory. 

The  reference  of  this  province  to  the  judiciary  is  a  polit- 
ical solecism,  and  has  no  historical  justification.  Its  only 
parallel  would  be  the  power  of  rabbinical  opinions,  in  the 
decay  of  the  national  life  of  Judsea,  and  the  influence  of 
the  jurisconsults  in  the  decadence  of  Rome.  Blackstone, 
in  defining  this  assumption,  says,  "  To  give  to  the  courts 
the  power  to  annul  the  laws  of  parliament  were  to  set  the 
judicial  power  above  that  of  the  legislature,  which  would 
be  subversive  of  all  government." l 

It  would  be  also  an  imperfect  arrangement,  since  the 
judiciary,  when  involved  in  a  conflict,  is  left  with  no  arbi- 
ter over  it,  and  there  is  no  provision  against  its  encroach- 
ment upon  the  other  powers,  and  its  assumption  for 
instance,  of  legislative  functions.  It  places  an  arbiter  be- 
tween two  parties;  but  it  is  a  third  party  and  is  also 
concerned.  Story  says,  "  a  declaratory  or  prohibitory  law 
would  be  the  remedy ;  "  but  the  judiciary  alone  would  be 
the  interpreter  of  this  law,  and  might  set  it  aside,  and  in 
a  decision  beyond  appeal. 

To  allow  to  the  judiciary  a  decision  upon  the  validity  of 
a  law  itself,  .and  that  before  it  had  involved  a  wrong  to  any, 
would  give  to  the  judiciary  an  absolute  veto  upon  the 
legislature.  It  would  have  no  parallel  except  perhaps  in 
tne  tribunitial  veto  in  Rome,2  the  ultima  jus  tribunorum 

1 1  Bl.  Comm.  91. 

2  Argument  of  the  Attorney  General,  1867. 

The  exclusion  of  the  judiciary  from  the  constructive  political  power  of  the 
nation,  has  been  recognized  in  an  opinion  of  the  Supreme  Court.  It  states  that 
when  the  national  government  acts,  for  instance,  in  reference  to  the  concerns  of  a 
commonwealth,  "  the  constitution,  so  far  as  it  provides  for  an  emergency  of  this 
kind,  has  treated  the  subject  as  political  in  its  nature  and  placed  the  power  in 
the  hands  of  that  department,"  i.  e.  the  legislature.  It  continues,  "  its  decision 
(f.  e.  the  legislature's)  is  binding  on  every  other  department  of  government,  and 
cannot  be  questioned  in  a  judicial  tribunal." —  Luther  v.  Borden,  7  Howard's  R.,  1. 

"  Invested  with  political  power  to  keep  the  other  departments  in  their  pre- 
scribed limits,  such  a  doctrine  must  destroy  the  judiciary.  The  people  will 
not  bear  a  political  power  which  is  independent  of  their  control.  If  the  judici- 


206  THE   NATION. 

of  the  republic,  and  the  illustration  still  would  be  imper- 
fect, for  the  tribunitial  power  was  of  the  people  and  was 
held  only  for  short  periods. 

The  decision  of  the  judiciary  is  authority  in  all  courts, 
and  this  is  necessary  to  the  unity  of  a  judicial  system  and 
the  uniform  interpretation  and  application  of  the  laws  ; 1 
but  the  decision  is  in  no  respect  binding  as  a  rule  of  legis- 
lation upon  the  legislature. 

The  judiciary  demands  for  its  strength  exclusion  from 
all  legislative  and  executive  functions.  It  has  the  indi- 
cation of  its  independence  in  the  tenure  of  its  office. 
It  is  not  a  representative  body,  and  therefore  is  not  to 
be  constructed  as  representative.  The  call  to  it  is  to  be 
from  the  government  of  the  nation,  in  its  authority.  It 
demands  also  exclusive  qualifications,  and  the  study  requi- 

ary  exercises  such  power  it  must  become  representative,  which  is  the  nature  of 
all  political  power  under  free  institutions.  A  branch  of  government  which  can 
dictate  to  the  legislature  is  legislative."  Fisher,  Trial  of  the  Constitution,  p.  82. 

"  By  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  the  President  is  invested  with  cer- 
tain important  political  powers,  in  the  exercise' of  which  he  is  to  use  his  own 
discretion,  and  is  accountable  only  to  his  country  in  his  political  character  and 
to  his  own  conscience.  To  aid  him  in  the  performance  of  these  duties  he  is  au- 
thorized to  appoint  certain  officers,  who  act  by  his  authority  and  in  conformity 
with  his  orders.  In  such  cases  their  acts  are  his  acts,  and  whatever  opinion  may 
be  entertained  of  the  manner  in  which  executive  discretion  may  be  used,  still 
there  exists  and  can  exist  no  power  to  control  that  discretion.  The  subjects  are 
political.  They  respect  the  nation,  not  individual  rights,  and  being  intrusted  to 
the  executive  the  decision  of  the  executive  is  conclusive."  Marbury  v.  Madison, 
1  Cranch's  R.,  137. 

"  The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  like  all  other  courts,  is  simply  a  court 
of  judicature,  to  decide  controverted  cases,  in  law,  equity  and  admiralty,  that  are! 
brought  before  it  by  actual  litigants.  It  is  not  charged  with  any  special  func- 
tion conservative  of  the  constitution,  like  the  so-entitled  Senate  of  the  French 
Constitution  of  December,  1799.  In  cases  before  it  the  Supreme  Court  has 
no  other  jurisdiction  over  constitutional  questions  than  is  possessed  by  the  hum- 
blest judicial  tribunal,  state  or  national,  in  the  land." 

"  The  court  does  not  formally  set  aside  or  declare  void,  any  statute  or  ordi- 
nance inconsistent  with  the  constitution.  It  simply  decides  the  case  before  it 
according  to  law,  and  if  laws  are  in  conflict,  according  to  that  law  which  has  the 
highest  authority,  that  is,  the  constitution."  —  Wheaton's  International  Law, 
Dana's  note,  p.  79. 

1  "  And  the  judges  in  every  state  shall  be  bound  thereby,  anything,  etc. 
Art.  6,  sec.  2. 


THE  NATION   AND  ITS  NORMAL   POWERS.  207 

site  to  its  higher  attainment  often  withdraws  men  from 
direct  intercourse  with  the  people. 

The  judiciary  must  always  resist  in  so  far  as  it  can, 
arbitrary  action  or  usurpation  in  every  form  and  by  every 
power  ;  but  it  is  not  invested  with  superior  or  special  func- 
tions for  this  end,  and  its  resistance  is  simply  that  which 
belongs  to  every  degree  of  power. 

The  judiciary  has,  in  fine,  no  power  of  origination,  but 
only  of  judgment  and  comparison.  But  it  subsists  in  the 
nation  in  its  sovereignty,  and  therefore,  while  it  is  not  con- 
stitutive of  the  political  order,  it  has  not  merely  a  formal 
relation  to  it.  Though  it  cannot  make  its  opinion  a  law 
constructive  of  the  political  order,  because  then  it  would 
be  a  legislative  power,  it  is  yet  in  its  sphere  to  interpret 
and  apply  the  law.  It  cannot  determine  what  shall  be  the 
law,  but  only  ascertain  and  define  what  is  the  law.  The 
fact  that  it  is  to  interpret  and  apply  the  constitution  as  law, 
and  then  also  the  laws  of  the  legislature,  has  been  the 
occasion  of  the  advancement  of  the  judiciary,  and  of  the 
reference  to  it  of  public  or  national  law.  If  it  be  allowed 
that  nations  stand  related  and  their  rights  and  powers  and 
obligations  are  comprehended  in  public  or  national  law,  as 
individuals  stand  in  their  private  relations  in  common  law, 
it  is  then  in  the  apprehension  and  explication  of  the  former 
that  the  province  of  the  national  judiciary  appears.  And 
the  strength  and  consistency  of  the  judiciary  in  its  his- 
torical course  has  been  in  the  fact  that  it  recognized  the 
necessary  being  of  the  nation,  as  subsistent  in  the  sphere 
of  public  or  national  law  ;  and  its  greater  decisions  were 
formed  in  the  conception  of  the  nation  in  its  necessary 
being,  —  the  organic  power  which  in  its  sovereignty  asserts 
itself  in  the  constitution,  and  enacts  its  will  as  law.1  The 

1  The  illustration  of  this  is,  for  instance,  in  the  decisions  of  Gibbons  v.  Ogden, 
Martin  v.  Hunter's  Lessee,  Luther  v.  Borden,  McCulloch  t».  Maryland,  Ogden  v. 
Saunders. 

The  constitution  is  interpreted  in  no  exclusive  or  restrictive  sense.  "  It  did 
not  suit  the  purposes  of  the  people,  in  framing  this  great  charter  of  our  liberties,  to 


208  THE  NATION. 

office  of  the  national  judiciary  is  necessarily  the  explication 
of  those  principles,  in  which  the  necessary  being  of  the 
nation  consists,  and  in  which  alone  national  rights  and 
powers  can  be  construed.  The  terms  of  the  constitution 
which  presume  the  being  of  the  people,  and  the  law  as 
the  expression  of  its  organic  will,  can  only  be  rightly  con- 
strued in  conformance  to  the  necessary  conception 'of  the 
nation.  It  is  certainly  to  allow  the  proper  authority  to  the 
historical  interpretation  of  law ;  but  this  can  be  only  as  it 
apprehends  the  actual  history  of  the  nation,  and  in  so  far 
as  it  substitutes  for  the  actual  facts  in  this  history,  its  own 
abstractions,  its  opinions  will  become  as  worthless  and  vain 
as  all  abstractions  are,  which  cannot  be  allowed  to  thwart 
or  to  stay  the  organic  course  of  the  people,  and  the  real- 
ization of  its  historical  life.  The  earlier  decisions  of  the 
Supreme  Court  were  characterized  by  their  profound  and 
lofty  conception  of  the  nation.  There  was,  in  that  period, 
in  the  varying  conflict  of  rights,  a  conception  of  the  na- 
tion, its  being,  its  rights,  its  powers,  its  capacities,  which 
places  the  names  of  the  earlier  justices  by  those  of  the 
earlier  presidents.  Chief  Justice  Marshall  is  second  only 
to  President  Washington,  and  the  services  of  Mr.  Justice 
Wilson  were  no  less  than  those  of  Mr.  Secretary  Hamil- 

provide  for  minute  specifications  of  its  powers,  or  to  declare  the  means  by  which 
these  powers  should  be  carried  into  execution.  Hence,  its  powers  are  expressed 
in  general  terms,  leaving  to  the  legislature  from  time  to  time  to  adopt  its  own 
means  to  effectuate  legitimate  objects,  and  to  mould  and  model  the  exercise  of  its 
powers  as  its  own  wisdom  and  the  public  interests  should  require."  — Martin  r. 
Hunter,  1  Wheaton  K.  304. 

"  This  instrument  contains  an  enumeration  of  powers,  expressly  granted  by 
the  people  to  their  government.  It  is  said  that  these  powers  ought  to  be  con- 
strued strictly.  But  why  ought  they  to  be  so  construed  ?  Is  there  one  sentence 
in  the  constitution  which  gives  countenance  to  this  rule?  In  the  last  of  the 
enumerated  powers,  that  which  grants  expressly  the  means  for  carrying  all  oth- 
ers into  execution,  Congress  is  authorized  to  make  all  laws  which  shall  be  nec- 
essary and  proper  for  the  purpose.  But  this  limitation  to  the  means  which  may 
be  used  is  not  extended  to  the  powers  which  are  conferred,  nor  is  there  one  sen- 
tence in  the  constitution  which  has  been  pointed  out  by  the  bar.  or  which  we 
have  been  able  to  discern,  that  prescribes  this  rule."  —  Gibbons  v.  Ogden,  9 
Wheaton  R.  1. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  NORMAL  POWERS.  209 

ton.  In  their  decisions,  there  is  the  foundation  of  a  na- 
tional jurisprudence,  which  Kent  has  justly  described  as 
"  a  solid  and  magnificent  structure."  It  is  in  later  decis- 
ions that  a  provincial  theory  or  a  partisan  scheme  or  a 
narrow  legal  dogma  succeeds  to  that  high  conception  of 
national  powers  and  rights ;  it  is  in  recent  decisions  that 
there  is  displayed  the  conceit  of  a  power,  which  in  its  his- 
torical interpretation  may  ignore  all  the  facts  in  the  history 
of  the  nation,  and  proceed  to  determine  the  issue  of  the 
gravest  historical  crises,  by  the  application  of  certain  pe- 
dantic formulas,  which  the  spirit  of  the  people  does  not 
know  nor  recognize. 

The  legislative  and  executive  and  judicial  powers,  in  the 
exact  significance  of  these  terms,  are  but  imperfectly  de- 
nned. The  distinction  has  a  scholastic  style,  and  is  sug- 
gestive rather  of  the  terminology  of  science  than  of  the 
powers  in  the  civil  and  political  organism.  These  phrases 
become  the  occasion  of  error,  when  they  are  assumed  to 
define  powers  which  have  not  their  source  in  the  organic 
unity,  and  their  development  in  the  organic  relations  of  the 
nation.  When  they  are  described  as  proceeding  from  a 
formal  law,  it  has  been  truly  said  that  they  make  of  the 
nation  only  a  great  law  machine,  and  the  government  a 
necessary  contrivance  for  making  laws,  where  one  power 
institutes  the  law  and  a  second  executes  and  a  third  applies 
it.  But  these  powers,  in  their  immanence  in  the  civil  and 
political  organism,  and  in  their  institution  in  the  realization 
of  rights  and  of  freedom,  transcend  this  empty  conception. 
There  is  beyond  these  terms  a  significance  in  the  words 
which  always  will  denote  these  powers  with  the  people,  — 
the  Congress,  the  President,  the  Judges. 

14 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE    NATION    AND    ITS    REPRESENTATIVE    CONSTITUTION. 

THE  sovereignty  of  the  nation  has  its  normal  assertion 
in  representative  government.  The  representative  prin- 
ciple is  illustrative  of  the  higher  political  organization. 

The  representative  constitution  is  the  realization  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  nation  in  its  necessary  conception  as  a 
moral  organism. 

Government  is  necessarily  of  and  through  a  person. 
There  is  in  its  action  the  assertion  of  personality,  and 
sovereignty  is  existent  as  the  determination  of  personality. 

In  the  normal  process  of  the  nation  in  its  representative 
organization,  in  whom  does  its  sovereignty  rightly  exist? 
The  common  answer  is  in  two  forms  :  — 

Firstly  ;  it  is  said  that  it  is  existent  in  the  whole  people. 
This  embraces  each  and  every  individual  in  the  nation, 
with  no  further  discrimination.  This  is  merely  indefinite, 
and  can  admit  of  no  actualization.  It  does  not  presume 
even  the  consciousness  of  a  political  unity  and  order,  which 
is  the  precedent  and  condition  of  the  action  of  the  political 
will.  It  does  not  ascertain  a  real  sovereignty.  It  is  phys- 
ically impossible,  since  the  whole  population  comprises  a 
certain  proportion  who  are  not  capable  of  performing  what 
the  proposition  presumes.  It  is  unhistorical,  since  there 
has  existed  no  political  organization  where  the  power  was 
held  in  common  by  the  whole  population  ;  some  law  regu- 
lative of  political  action  in  the  consciousness  of  the  people 
must  be  assumed.  The  proposition  is  inconsistent  with 
the  organic  and  moral  being  of  the  nation,  and  has  its 
premise  in  the  conception  which  identifies  the  contiguous 
population  in  a  certain  locality  with  the  nation. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.     211 

Secondly ;  it  is  said  that  it  is  existent  in  the  qualified 
electors.  But  who,  in  the  normal  representative  consti- 
tution, are  qualified  ?  What  qualification  may  be  rightly 
assumed  by  the  nation  as  defining  an  elector  ?  It  is  said 
that  the  nation  of  itself  has  a  right  to  define  the  qualifi- 
cations of  its  electors.  This  is  evident;  for  as  the  act 
of  the  elector  presumes  the  being  of  the  nation,  and 
the  consciousness  of  unity  and  order,  that  is  a  political 
spirit,  so  the  nation  alone  may  define  the  qualifications  of 
its  electors ;  and  the  act  then  of  the  elector  is  that  of  one 
in  whom  there  is  the  political  spirit  which  subsists  in  the 
nation.  The  act  of  each  —  the  nation  and  the  elector 
—  is  primarily  involved  in  the  other,  there  is  a  logical, 
but  not  a  formal,  precedence.  But  since,  then,  the  nation 
alone  has  the  right  to  define  the  qualifications  of  its  elec- 
tors, in  what  principle  may  it  rightly  proceed  to  define 
them  ?  In  what  principle  may  it  ascertain  the  real  sov- 
ereignty of  the  nation,  so  that  in  the  designation  of  its 
qualifications  its  sovereignty  may  have  full  and  free 
exposition?  The  nation  cannot  be  left  to  define  these 
arbitrarily,  since  that  would  contradict  the  reason  of  the 
state,  and  would  imply  injustice  in  the  nation  itself;  its 
process  would  become  the  expression  of  the  willfulness 
of  men,  not  of  the  will  of  the  people.  It  cannot  be  pre- 
sumed that  they  are  to  be  left  for  their  definition  to  the 
adjustment  of  accident,  since  the  conception  of  sovereignty 
precludes  this;  and  the  nation  can  allow  no  accident  to 
shape  its  course  or  determine  its  end. 

In  what  principle,  then,  is  the  nation  to  proceed  in  its 
representative  constitution,  —  in  the  realization  of  its  sov- 
ereignty? This  inquiry  may  be  carried  further.  What 
is  the  quality  of  the  act  of  an  elector  for  which  qualifica- 
tions are  requisite  in  order  to  define  it?  In  other  words, 
what  is  a  vote  ?  A  vote  is  the  formal  assertion,  in  con- 
formance  to  certain  political  prescriptions,  of  a  free  will  in 
the  determination  of  the  government  of  the  civil  and  polit- 


212  THE  NATION. 

ical  organization.  It  is  the  act  of  a  person  in  the  political 
process  of  the  people  of  which  he  is  a  member.  A  person 
is  one  who  has  a  free  will,  —  one  whose  action  is  free  and 
self-determined.  This  is  the  substance  of  personality,  and 


in  this  personality  is  in  identity  with  sovereignty.     The 
c,       existence  of  personality  is  therefore  necessarily  presumed* 
in  the  qualifications  of  an  elector. 

The  inquiry,  then,  as  to  the  principle  of  representation 
is  resolved  into  the  further  inquiry,  what  is  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  nation, — the  normal  political  organization,  in 
which  a  person  acts  as  an  elector,  in  the  determination  of 
its  sovereignty  ?  The  answer  to  this  inquiry  has  always 
been  in  correspondence  to  some  antecedent  assumption,  as 
to  the  being  and  end  of  the  nation. 

It  is  said  that  the  nation  is  formed  in  the  representation 
of  interests,  which  in  their  combination  are  assumed  to 
constitute  the  political  organization.  This  is  the  postulate 
of  Mr.  Calhoun.  He  says :  "  There  are  two  ways  in 
which  the  sense  of  the  community  may  be  taken.  One 
regards  numbers  only  and  considers  the  whole  community 
as  having  but  one  common  interest  throughout,  and  collects 
the  sense  of  the  greater  number  of  the  whole  as  that  of 
the  community.  The  other,  on  the  contrary,  regards  in- 
terests as  well  as  numbers,  considering  the  community  as 
made  up  of  different  and  conflicting  interests,  as  far  as  the 
government  is  concerned,  and  takes  the  sense  of  each 
through  its  appropriate  organ,  and  the  united  sense  of  all 
as  the  sense  of  the  entire  community."1  This  is  defined  as 
a  universal  principle  and  applied  to  all  forms  of  govern- 
ment. "  In  a  republic,  in  consequence  of  the  absence  of 
artificial  distinctions,  the  various  natural  interests  rise  into 
prominence  and  struggle  for  the  ascendency  ; "  and  he  says 
of  the  restriction  of  each  by  the  other,  "it  is  this  negative 
power  which  in  fact  forms  the  constitution." 

i  Calhoun's  Works,  vol.  i.  p.  221. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.    213 

This  identifies  the  nation  with  the  commonwealth  or 
the  civil  corporation,  while  in  that  it  is  imperfect,  since  it 
allows  no  real  ground  for  its  continuance.  It  apprehends 
the  organization  of  society  only  as  the  combination  of  con- 
flicting interests,  each  struggling  for  the  ascendency,  and 
the  constitution  is  the  negative  result  which  is  obtained  in 
the  balance  of  these  repellant  forces.  This  theory  of  self- 
ishness, or  of  enlightened  self-interest  —  V inter et  lien  en- 
tendre, which  is  assumed  as  the  basis  of  society,  cannot 
become  the  foundation,  nor,  in  the  balance  of  its  endless 
antagonisms,  constitute  the  authority  of  the  nation.  There 
is  no  combination  of  private  interests  or  private  rights 
which  can  attain  to  the  conception  of  public  rights  or  du- 
ties, or  create  a  public  spirit ;  no  accumulation  of  special 
interests  can  form  the  whole,  and  the  nation  does  not  exist 
for  the  furtherance  of  private  or  special  ends. 

Interests,  even  in  the  low  and  evil  conception  of  life  in 
which  this  theory  proceeds,  do  not  form  the  stronger  mo- 
tives to  human  action,  but  are  overborne  even  by  the 
habits  and  impulses  and  passions  of  men.  These  interests 
moreover,  centering  in  self,  cannot  become  constructive  of 
unity,  for  unity  can  subsist  only  in  the  consciousness  of 
moral  relations.  There  is  also  in  the  foundation  of  the 
nation  the  manifestation  of  a  spirit  and  law  of  duty  and 
sacrifice,  and  there  has  been  none  but  has  been  called  to 
crises  in  which  no  interests  could  be  weighed  against  the 
sacredness  of  its  life,  or  the  obligation  of  maintaining  it. 

While  each  interest  is  thus  constituted  as  a  negative 
against  every  other  interest,  these  negations  can  form 
nothing  positive  ;  they  are  constructive  of  nothing. 

The  proposition  assumes  also  a  representation  "  through 
their  appropriate  organs,"  of  various  interests,  whose  value 
is  to  be  regarded,  and  which  are  weighed  and  counted 
against  each  other,  and  estimated  by  some  special  consid- 
eration. As  this  becomes  the  ground  of  representation, 
it  would  consistently  require  a  Representation  of  interests 


214  THE  NATION. 

proportionate  to  their  value  and  extent,  and  form  a  con- 
stantly changing  schedule. 

It  is  deficient  even  as  a  description  of  the  commonwealth 
or  the  civil  corporation,  and  in  it  the  organization  of  society 
is  severed  from  its  moral  ground  ;  its  bond  is  only  the 
maxim  of  expediency,  and  its  permanence  the  dictate  of 
some  separate  and  private  interest  seeking  its  own  end. 
There  is  no  longer  a  higher  authority  for  government,  nor 
the  recognition  of  a  divine  obligation  to  maintain  order 
and  to  punish  crime.  It  is  the  disintegration  of  society; 
and  the  subversion  of  the  whole,  by  the  secession  of  any 
interest  which  deems  the  action  justified  by  the  grievance 
it  may  suffer,  or  by  the  profit  it  may  anticipate,  is  its  logical 
and  historical  sequence. 

It  is  said  that  the  nation  is  constituted  in  the  representa- 
tion of  families.  The  family  is  the  integral  and  formative 
unit  of  the  nation  ;  each  family  is  to  be  represented  in  it, 
and  only  one  who  is  the  head  of  a  family  is  to  be  an  elec- 
tor. 

But  the  nation  as  an  organism  is  distinct  from  the 
family.  Instead  of  being  limited  and  defined  in  its  end 
by  the  end  of  the  family,  and  in  its  order  subordinate  to 
it,  it  is  constituted  over  it. 

The  proposition  would  conform  to  an  oriental  type  of 
society,  and  instead  of  consisting  with  the  organic  and 
moral  being  of  the  nation,  it  would  be  constructive  of  a 
state  in  which  there  was  no  political  spirit,  and  no  citizen- 
ship or  law  or  freedom.  It  would  also,  unless  supplemented 
by  a  fiction,  obviously  exclude  some  who  have  wrought 
with  the  highest  power  in  history. 

It  is  inconsistent  with  the  nation  in  its  necessary  con- 
ception, as  itself  a  moral  organism,  to  which  *the  individ- 
ual has  an  immediate  relation,  and  not  merely  a  rela- 
tion formulated  through  the  family.  But  the  error  in 
the  premise  of  the  proposition,  is  the  implication  of  the 
identity  of  the  family  with  the  nation. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE  CONSTITUTION.      215 

It  is  said  that  the  nation  is  constituted  in  the  representa-     ** 
tion  of  numbers.     The  whole  number  of  inhabitants  as 
enumerated  by  a  census,  is  to  be  represented. 

There  is  no  more  reason  why  «men  should  be  esti- 
mated by  their  numbers  than  by  any  other  physical  qual- 
ity, as  for  instance  their  bulk.  There  would  be  the  same 
consistency  in  basing  representation  upon  the  stature  or 
color  or  gesture  of  men,  and  these  might  with  the  same 
justice  enter  into  the  representative  government.  There 
is  no  clearer  discrimination  of  sovereignty  in  numbers 
than  in  any  physical  proportions.  This  also  assumes  the 
identity  of  the  nation  or  the  political  people  simply  with 
the  population. 

It  is  said  that  the  representation  should  be  of  certain 
capacities  or  properties  or  accidents  attaching  to  men.  This 
regards  certain  powers  of  mind,  or  incidents  of  life,  as 
for  instance,  occupation,  as  the  ground  of  representation. 
The  practical  application  of  this  proposition  has  been  at- 
tempted in  the  scheme  for  a  plurality  of  votes.  Mr.  Mill 
denies  the  proposition,  "  that  all  persons  ought  to  be  equal 
in  every  description  of  right  recognized  by  society,"  and 
therefore  demands  a  distinction  in  the  number  of  votes 
which  each  should  give  ;  "if  every  ordinary  unskilled 
laborer  ought  to  have  one  vote,  a  skilled  laborer  ought  to 
have  two,  a  farmer,  manufacturer,  or  trader  should  have 
three  or  four,  a  lawyer,  a  physician,  or  surgeon,  a  clergy- 
man of  any  denomination,  a  literary  man,  an  artist,  a  pub- 
lic functionary,  ought  to  have  five  or  six."  These  propor- 
tions are  laid  down,  "  putting  aside  for  the  present  the 
consideration  of  moral  worth,  of  which,  though  more  im- 
portant even  than  intellectual,  it  is  not  so  easy  to  find  an 
available  test."  If  then  this  consideration  of  relative  moral 
worth  were  added  in  this  arithmetical  estimate,  the  differ- 
ence between  the  single  vote  of  the  workman,  who  knows 
enough  to  cast  one  vote  but  not  more  than  one,  or  is  good 


216  THE  NATION. 

enough  to  cast  one  but  no  more,  and  the  higher  grades  of 
social  and  intellectual  acquisition  would  be  very  great.  But 
the  proposition,  in  its  application,  would  be  unjust  upon  its 
own  premise,  while,  this  condition  is  omitted,  and  of  this 
the  external  condition  gives  no  test.  If  the  power  of  each 
as  an  elector  was  made  thus  proportionate,  in  a  numerical 
scale,  to  certain  external  signs  of  relative  moral  worth, 
the  standard  would  inevitably  be  so  imperfect,  as  to  make 
the  actual  process  corresponding  to  it  the  most  complex 
system  of  injustice.  It  not  only  would  revive  the  maxims 
of  the  Pharisees,  but  it  would  attach  to  their  schedule  of 
virtues  a  power  beyond  any  compensation  that  has  been 
assumed  in  their  estimates.  If  it  were  joined  to  a  merely 
economical  conception  of  the  state,  there  could  be  for  a 
people  whose  moral  strength  had  any  living  energy  or 
spirit,  no  agent  of  debasement  so  potent. 

But  the  principle  which  the  scheme  assumes  is  false,  for 
it  is  not  the  occupations  nor  the  acquisitions  of  men,  nor 
literary  attainment,  nor  official  place,  nor  artistic  nor  pro- 
fessional skill  that  is  the  ground  of  rights,  but  it  is  person- 
ality itself,  and  in  the  infinite  worth  of  personality  —  the 
worth  of  manhood  —  is  alone  the  foundation  of  rights.  The 
state  can  compute  this  by  no  arithmetical  notation,  nor  by 
any  addition  or  subtraction  can  it  find  its  numerical  equa- 
tion. It  cannot  set  against  some  intellectual  or  professional 
acquisition  in  one  person  the  whole  determinate  action 
of  another  person.  The  proposition  proceeds  from  a 
merely  artificial  notion  of  personality,  a  mechanical  stand- 
ard of  duties  and  rights,  a  formal  scheme  of  morals,  the 
empiric  of  virtue  ;  it  is  the  "  excellent  foppery  of  the 
world." 

It  may  "be  further  said  of  this  scheme,  that  none  of  the 
properties  and  powers  enumerated  in  it  correspond  to  the 
nation  as  founded  in  the  nature  of  man,  and  as  the  nor- 
mal and  moral  order  of  human  existence.  If  it  were  a 
great  utilitarian  organization  or  machine,  a  cutlers'  associa- 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  KEPRESENTATIVE  CONSTITUTION.   217 

tion,  or  a  railway  or  gas  company,  or  a  produce  exchange, 
or  an  economic  society,  and  it  were  required  to  choose 
those  who  should  be  its  foremen  or  directors,  then  it  might 
better  give  to  skilled  labor  or  to  professional  attainments, 
and  to  these  in  their  strictest  estimate,  the  sole  or  the  sub- 
stantial choice  ;  and  if  it  were  only  an  academic  society,  a 
school  or  sect,  then  literary  culture  or  scholastic  habit 
might  chose  its  dean  or  doctors. 

But  it  is  none  of  these ;  the  principle,  moreover,  in  so 
far  as  these  estimates  have  been  applied,  has  been  dis- 
proved. The  literary  and  scientific  class,  to  whom  in  this 
estimate,  and  perhaps,  on  its  premise,  no  better  could  be 
made,  a  power  sixfold  beyond  that  of  the  unlearned  is 
allowed,  have  only  too  often  been  betrayed  by  whim  and 
caprice,  and  subservience  to  political  abstractions.  They 
are  men  withdrawn,  perhaps,  in  the  narrow  circle  of  some 
ethnic  or  linguistic  theory,  and  blind  to  all  facts  beyond  its 
narrow  horizon,  or  scholars  who  draw  their  political  prece- 
dents from  the  ideal  world  of  Homer's  heroes,  and  not  the 
grander  world  of  to-day.  The  Universities,  when  a  special 
representation  is  open  to  them,  are  more  often  represented 
by  lower  men ;  as  Oxford  in  England,  whose  later  repre- 
sentatives could  scarcely  justify  the  working  of  the  repre- 
sentative system  in  comparison  with  the  greatest  of  its 
medieval  politicians,  William  of  Occam,  or  might  suggest, 
in  the  comparison,  some  question  as  to  the  principle  itself. 
A  fact  often  noticed,  is  the  tendency,  also,  to  defect  of 
political  spirit  and  loyalty,  in  men  of  an  exclusively  scien- 
tific or  mathematical  culture ;  it  may  be  in  the  latter, 
because  their  study  is  merely  formal ;  there  is  the  depre- 
ciation of  the  moral  or  political  world,  the  life  of  man  in 
history  and  the  order  of  society,  in  comparison  with  the 
physical  world. 

But  this  empiric  standard  wou!4  require  also  for  its  con- 
sistency the  adoption  of  a  negative  scale,  by  which  the 
number  of  votes  should  be  diminished,  as,  for  instance,  one 


218  THE  NATION. 

who  lives  in  idleness,  whether  in  poverty  or  with  inherited 
wealth,  whatever  be  his  profession  or  his  attainment  in  it, 
should  have  his  number  of  votes  correspondingly  reduced ; 
this  rule  of  subtraction  would  require  constant  changes 
with  the  changes  of  condition  or  character,  as  on  some 
weather-gauge  with  its  shifts  ;  and  in  the  representation 
of  professions,  the  difference  between  the  better  and  poorer 
members  is  more  than  the  difference  between  separate 
professions,  and  this  also  would  require  representation. 

While  the  aim  in  this  proposition  may  be  well  enough, 
the  principle  assumed  has  no  foundation,  and  therefore 
fails  of  any  clearly  denned  practical  application.  It  is  at 
the  outset  in  conflict  with  the  foundation  of  rights,  or  it 
may  be  said,  that  it  allows  its  inconsistency  with  an  equal- 
ity of  rights.  The  proposition  has  its  premise  in  the  me- 
chanical notion  of  psychology,  which  classifies  and  divides 
the  will  and  the  affections  and  the  powers  of  the  mind,  so 
that,  as  in  Hegel's  illustration,  a  man  is  represented  as 
carrying  one  faculty  in  one  pocket  and  one  in  another.  It 
is  after  the  distinctions  of  the  school-men,  who  pronounced 
their  judgment  upon  the  masters  in  the  medieval  schools 
by  a  fixed  scale,  representing  for  instance  genius  as  four, 
learning  as  five,  imagination  as  six,  judgment  as  seven, 
and  striking  the  balance  in  order  to  arrive  at  their  com- 
parative merit.  When  Mr.  Mill,  to  maintain  his  proposi- 
tion in  opposition  to  "  equal  suffrage,"  defines  the  latter  as 
an  "  equal  claim  to  control  over  the  government  of  other 
people,"1  it  resolves  the  state  into  its  atomy,  and  is  the 
merest  individualism ;  for  no  man  has  a  claim  to  control 
over  the  government  of  another,  but  the  nation  has  the 
claim  to  government  over  the  whole. 

/  The  nation,  then,  is  not  constructed  in  the  representa- 
tion of  interests,  for  it  is  in  itself  before  each  and  every 
separate  and  special  interest,  and  can  be  formed  by  no  ac- 
cumulation of  them ;  it  is  not  of  numbers,  for  these  may 

1  J.  S.  Mill,  Dissertations,  etc.,  vol.  iv.  p.  160. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.    219 

exist  separately  from  it,  and  no  aggregate  of  numbers,  how- 
ever vast,  is  in  identity  with  it ;  it  is  not  of  families,  for  it 
is  other  than  the  family,  and  no  collection  of  families  can 
attain  to  it ;  it  is  not  of  special  acquirements  or  capacities, 
as  an  association  of  trades,  or  arts,  or  schools,  for  the  state 
is  in  none  of  these  ;  it  is  not  to  interests  or  families  or  num- 
bers, or  special  and  exclusive  professions  and  attainments, 
that  the  right  of  government  in  the  nation  belongs. 

The  nation  is  constituted  in  its  normal  political  order,  in 
the  representation  of  persons  ;  and  the  right  to  representa- 
tion is  the  right  of  a  member  of  the  nation  who  is  a 
person. 

Government  is  and  can  be  only  of  and  through  a  person. 
The  vote  is  the  right  in  the  nation  of  a  person,  as  the 
act  can  be  only  the  act  of  a  person.  This  is  no  abstrac- 
tion to  be  newly  applied  in  the  sphere  of  politics,  and 
no  scheme  for  which  from  the  outset  an  actualization  is 
sought,  but  it  is  the  principle  which  has  the  broadest 
ground  in  history,  and  the  only  ground  in  reason,  and  the 
necessary  ground  in  justice. 

Firstly ;  this  principle  has  the  broadest  ground  in  his- 
tory. It  alone  can  claim  an  historical  justification  in  the 
representative  constitution.  It  has  not  infrequently  passed 
into  the  order  of  the  state  without  a  direct  or  avowed  rec- 
ognition, as  if  of  itself  coming  forth.  There  has  been  a  con 
stant  endeavor,  in  some  shape,  toward  its  assertion.  The 
most  common  tests  which  have  been  established  have  had 
no  other  consistent  basis,  and  without  the  recognition  of 
this  law  fall  to  pieces  as  a  miscellaneous  bundle  of  terms 
and  conditions.  Thus,  in  the  most  common  conditions  for 
instance,  a  universal  principle  being  assumed,  the  child, 
or  the  dependent,  or  the  demented  are  not  allowed  to 
vote,  since  they  have  not  the  wil],  the  conscious  self-deter- 
mination and  freedom  of  a  person ;  and  in  the  conception 
of  the  law  they  are  constructively,  but  not  actually  per- 


220  THE  NATION. 

sons ;  and  they,  also,  who  have  been  proven  to  have  taken 
a  bribe,  or  made  a  wager  on  the  issue  of  an  election,  are 
not  allowed  to  vote,  since  their  act,  as  controlled  by  an 
external  consideration,  is  regarded  as  no  longer  free,  that 
is  the  act  of  a  person ;  and  they-  who  have  committed  a 
high  crime  are  not  allowed  to  vote,  not  because  this  priva- 
tion is  an  immediate  punishment  of  crime,  but  because 
through  crime  they  are  regarded  as  having  lost  their  free- 
dom, as  in  wickedness  men  are  no  more  free,  and  there  is 
in  it  the  destruction  of  personality.  There  are  no  other 
tests  which  have  been  established  so  widely  as  these,  and 
in  this  principle  alone  they  have  their  consistent  ground. 
The  qualification  of  property  might  claim  as  wide  an  appli- 
cation, but  that  refers  to  this  also  for  its  ultimate  justifica- 
tion. Blackstone,  in  a  passage  of  great  breadth  and  sig- 
nificance, concedes  this.  He  says,  "  The  true  reason  of 
requiring  any  qualification,  with  regard  to  property  in 
voters,  is  to  exclude  such  persons  as  are  in  so  mean  a 
situation,  that  they  are  esteemed  to  have  no  will  of  their 
own.  If  it  were  probable  that  every  man  would  give  his 
vote  freely,  then  every  member  of  the  community  should  have 
a  vote.  But  since  that  can  hardly  be  expected  in  any  of 
indigent  fortunes,  or  such  as  are  under  the  immediate 
dominion  of  others,  all  popular  states  have  been  obliged 
to  establish  certain  qualifications,  whereby  some  who  are 
suspected  to  have  no  will  of  their  own  are  excluded  from 
voting"  Again  he  says,  " only  such  are  entirely  excluded 
as  can  have  no  will  of  their  own."  While  this  presentation 
of  human  nature,  which  makes  property  the  sign  of  per- 
sonality, is  neither  just  nor  edifying,  the  principle  of  rep- 
resentation is  conceded  in  it.  There  is,  therefore,  in  all 
these  tests,  which  have  had  the  widest  institution,  the 
recognition  of  this  principle  and  the  endeavor  to  establish 
it.  It  alone  has  the  broadest  historical  ground,  and  only 
in  their  reference  to  it  are  the  common  conditions  justi- 
fied. 


THE  NATION  AND    ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.     221 

Secondly ;  this  principle  has  the  only  ground  in  reason. 
It  has  its  precedent  in  the  being  of  the  nation  as  the 
natural  and  normal  order  of  human  society.  In  person- 
ality, man  has  the  condition  of  all  rights,  and  a  realized 
personality  is  to  have  its  normal  expression  in  the  nation, 
as  the  nation  is  the  natural  and  normal  condition  of  hu- 
man society.  The  right  to  vote  is  therefore  a  natural 
right,  —  the  right  of  a  member  of  the  nation.  It  is  still  the 
induction,  in  fact,  of  the  postulate  of  Aristotle,  "  man  is  by 
nature  a  political  being."  If  the  nation  was  only  a  formal 
or  an  artificial  association,  then  it  could  allow  any  formal 
qualification  and  any  artificial  test,  and  the  political  arti- 
ficers constructing  the  fabric  could  elaborate  them  after 
their  own  device ;  but  if  it  be  the  natural  order  and  con- 
dition of  human  existence,  as  there  is  in  personality  the 
realization  of  the  true  nature  of  man,  so  in  the  nation,  as 
the  manifestation  of  the  true  nature  of  man,  there  is  to  be 
the  expression  of  it.  There  is  no  other  conception  of  gov- 
ernment which  is  not  inextricably  involved  in  the  arbitrary 
or  the  accidental. 

Mr.  Brownson  says,  "  The  elective  franchise  is  not  a  nat- 
ural right,  because  it  is  political  power,  and  political  power 
is  always  a  trust,  never  a  natural  right,  and  the  state 
judges  for  itself  to  whom  it  will  or  will  not  confide  the 
right."  It  is  evident  that  the  nation  is  to  judge  for  itself 
to  whom  it  is  to  confide  the  right,  but  the  whole  inquiry  is, 
as  to  what  principle  it  may  rightly  act  upon,  in  the  asser- 
tion of  this  right,  and  what  is  to  be  the  premise  of  its  judg- 
ment. It  is  a  right  as  well  as  a  trust,  but  the  position  of 
Mr.  Brownson  assumes  as  the  condition  of  the  process  of 
the  nation,  the  isolation  of  positive  from  natural  rights,  and 
the  severance  of  the  sphere  of  each.  It  is  a  trust  and  a 
right,  and  there  is  an  inherent  weakness  in  its  separation 
as  a  trust  from  its  conception  us  a  right.  In  it,  as  it  is 
nowhere  else  apparent,  there  is  the  correspondence  of  a 
right  and  a  duty,  as  they  subsist  in  personality ;  it  is  a 


222  THE  NATION. 

trust  vested  only  in  an  actual  or  realized  personality,  and 
in  this  only  is  it  a  right.1 

In  this  the  nation  is  constituted  in  conformance  to  its 
necessary  conception,  as  a  moral  organism.  There  is 
evolved  in  a  moral  organism  the  affirmation  of  personality, 
and  the  nation  is  formed  in  the  realization  of  personality. 
The  person  who  is  a  member  of  a  nation  is  not  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  negation  in  his  relation  to  it.  For  personality 
no  negative  condition  is  to  be  postulated,  in  which  its  be- 
ing is  ignored,  and  its  aim  is  disallowed;  but  it  is  to  be 
regarded,  as  the  nation  strives  toward  the  realization  of  a 
moral  order. 

It  is  not  alone  the  passive  right  to  the  advantages  re- 
sultant from  the  nation,  for  in  this  there  could  be  neither 
the  satisfaction  of  the  moral  longing  nor  the  fulfillment  of 
the  moral  aim  of  man,  and  this  would  indicate  only  the 
defect  in  the  moral  condition  of  the  nation  and  its  degra- 
dation, but  it  is  the  right  to  recognition  as  a  person  and 
the  correspondent  affirmation  of  personality  in  the  process 
of  the  nation.2 

In  this  the  nation  is  constituted  in  conformance  to  its 
necessary  conception,  as  the  realization  of  freedom.  Free- 
dom is  no  negation ;  it  is  not  found  simply  in  the  security 
which  is  obtained  by  restrictions  imposed  upon  an  exter- 
nal power,  nor  in  the  uses  resultant  from  the  checks  and 
guaranties  constructed  against  an  external  power.  It  is 
not  attained  in  a  condition  of  indifference  to  the  nation. 
It  is  not  in  the  acquiescent  reception  of  its  common  advan- 
tages, nor  in  the  permissive  participation  in  the  things  in 
which  it  has  profited.  Personality  is  not  regarded  in  the 
nation  when  it  is  restricted  to  some  special  end,  nor  has  it 

1  Brownson,  The  American  Republic,  p.  379. 

"  No  man  has  a  natural  right  to  be  a  voter  without  qualifications  or  conditions, 
but  every  man  in  a  republican  state  has  a  natural  right  to  become  a  voter."  - 
Mr.  Taylor  Lewis. 

2  "  Die  volksvertretung  ist  ini  Staat  absolute  sittliche  Forderung,  namlich 
genau  in  demselben  Maase,  in  welchem  der  Staat,  bereits  wirklicher  Staat  ist."  - 
Rothe,  Theologtsche  Ethik,  vol.  ii.  p.  125. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.      223 

compensation  in  the  partnership  of  its  accumulated  gains. 
The  personality  of  man  is  not  in  the  multitude  of  things 
which  he  possesses.  Freedom  is  only  in  the  realization  of 
personality ;  it  is  only  as  there  is  in  the  nation,  in  its  pro- 
cess and  order,  the  expression  of  personality  that  there  is 
in  it  the  realization  of  freedom.1 

Thirdly ;  this  principle  has  a  necessary  ground  in  jus- 
tice. In  this,  government  in  the  nation  is  constituted  in 
conforinance  to  its  normal  law.  It  rests  in  the  conscious 
consent  of  the  people.  It  is  the  assertion  of  the  political 
will  of  the  political  people.  The  more  perfect  expression 
of  the  will  of  the  people  is  in  the  government,  and  it  em- 
bodies in  it  its  purpose,  and  has  in  it  the  satisfaction  of  its 
aim.  The  government  in  the  determination  of  its  sove- 
reignty is  not  a  mere  order  apart  from  the  peopfe ;  it  is  not 
an  abstraction  having  no  ground  in  the  organic  and  moral 
being  of  the  people,  but  it  is  the  determinate  life  of  the 
people  in  the  realization  of  a  moral  order. 

The  government  in  its  necessary  conception  is  over  the 
people,  but  it  is  none  the  less  the  determinate  action  of  the 
people,  and  of  the  whole  people  in  its  realized  sovereignty. 
The  individual  person  is  not  simply  to  exist  as  a  subject  to 
the  government  of  the  nation,  while  yet  he  is  in  perfect 
subjection  to  it,  but  he  is  to  act  determinately  in  it. 
The  self  government  of  the  people  is  then  no  speculative 
pretense,  and  no  legal  abstraction;  it  is  no  formal  order 
and  no  aggregate  of  institutions,  but  there  is  in  it  the  real- 
ization of  the  self-determination  of  the  people,  the  asser- 

1  Franklin  asserted  these  two  theses :  "  That  every  person  of  the  community, 
except  infants,  insane  persons,  and  criminals,  is  of  common  right  and  by  the 
laws  of  God  a  free  man,  and  entitled  to  the  full  enjoyment  of  liberty."  "  That 
liberty  or  freedom  consists  in  having  an  actual  share  in  the  appointment  of  those 
who  frame  the  laws,  and  who  are  to  be  the  guardians  of  every  man,  of  life,  prop- 
erty and  peace;  for  the  all  of  one  man  is  as  dear  to  him  as  the  all  of  another; 
and  the  poor  man  has  an  equal  right,  but  more  need  to  have  representatives  in 
the  legislature  than  the  rich  one."  —  Franklin,  Works,  vol.  ii.  p.  372. 

"  Auch  in  der  rechtlichen  Freiheit,  ist  demnach,  die  Wahl,  ein  unentbehrliches 
moment, — ja,  sie  ist  die  Bliithe  der  Freiheit,  denn  die  Wahl  ist  eben  die  Aus- 
Berung  der  Individualitat."  —  Stahl,  vol.  ii.  sec.  i.  p.  327. 


224  THE  NATION. 

tion  of  and  the  obedience  to  law.  The  right  of  govern- 
ment in  the  nation  is  not  then  merely  prescriptive ;  nor  is 
it  derivative  from  any  convention ;  nor  is  it  to  be  con- 
strued as  a  private  right,  to  become  the  privilege  of  a 
caste  ;  nor  is  it  to  be  restricted  to  a  succession  in  a  certain 
family  or  a  certain  number  of  families  to  be  accounted  only 
as  some  domiciliary  right,  vested  in  its  present  occupants, 
and  to  descend  as  their  estate,  but  it  is  the  right  of  the 
people  in  the  realization  of  its  moral  being. 

If  any  other  principle  be  assumed,  it  must  justify  itself 
in  another  and  a  lower  conception.  If  for  instance,  the 
nation  is  based  upon  property  or  has  for  its  end  the  secu- 
rity of  property,  then  property  may  control  it,  and  money, 
not  men,  may  rule  it,  and  those  who  have  their  highest 
accompli sfrment  in  the  making  and  keeping  of  money  may 
represent  it; — if  it  consist  as  a  private  possession  in  the 
privileges  of  the  few,  a  family,  or  class,  or  race,  whom  force 
or  accident  has  placed  in  power,  and  if  it  be  only  the  in- 
crement of  their  privileges  to  be  held  against  all  comers, 
until  some  may  come  with  stronger  and  more  subtle  force 
to  oust  them,  and  hold  these  privileges  against  the  former 
proprietors,  then,  those  holding  them  alone  may  determine 
the  course  and  destination  of  the  whole.  If  any  form  be 
assumed  by  which  the  expression  of  personality  is  denied, 
then  in  so  far,  the  government  is  defective,  as  the  form  is 
arbitrary,  since  it  exists  not  in  the  affirmation  of  that 
which  yet,  in  a  realized  personality,  has  in  itself  the  spirit 
and  the  determination  in  which  government  subsists.  It 
becomes  the  suppression  and  not  the  manifestation  of  the 
power  immanent  in  the  nation  in  its  moral  being.  And 
as  the  form  in  which  the  affirmation  of  personality  in  its 
normal  process  is  denied  is  arbitrary,  it  may  assume  the 
form  of  the  determination  of  an  individual,  or  family,  or 
class,  and  becomes  the  support  of  the  power  and  privileges 
of  one  or  of  a  few,  who  hold  only  a  formal  and  legal  prece- 
dence. It  establishes  the  government  in  an  exclusive,  and 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  EEPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.      225 

not  in  a  universal  principle,  and  it  is  formed  in  a  narrow 
separatism,  as  if  the  individual  personality  were  to  act  in 
the  nation  for  some  special  end  which  is  placed  before 
each,  but  not  in  its  being,  in  the  realization  of  the  univer- 
sal end. 

The  representative  government  is  therefore  constituted  / 
in  the  representation  of  the  people,  in  the  realization  of 
its  moral  being.  It  is  the  representation  of  persons.  This 
principle  has  had  its  assertion  in  the  progress  of  the  nation, 
and  with  the  higher  result  of  history.  It  is  in  the  being 
and  order  and  sovereignty  of  the  nation,  in  the  institution 
of  rights,  in  the  realization  of  freedom,  that  common  men 
as  a  fact  have  proven  themselves  to  be  men.  The  suc- 
cession in  the  authority  of  the  nation,  since  iiS  inaugura- 
tion, has  been  maintained  unbroken,  and  has  triumphed 
over  anarchy,  when  allied  with  the  hate  and  the  secret 
assault  and  support  of  aristocratic  and  imperial  powers. 
It  has  been  the  ordination  of  a  mightier  sovereignty,  and 
the  institution  of  an  ampler  freedom,  and  the  realization  of 
the  noblest  political  order  which  the  world  has  seen.  The 
line  of  the  Presidents,  the  elect  of  the  people,  from  Pres- 
ident Washington  to  President  Lincoln,  has  been  greater 
than  any  line  of  kings.  In  the  succession  of  events,  the 
self-determinate  purpose,  the  moral  strength  of  the  people, 
has  been  tried  in  its  integrity  and  firmness  of  resolve, 
through  the  crises  of  the  most  mighty  insurrection,  and  it 
has  sought  the  maintenance  of  the  authority  of  law,  and 
the  consistence  and  continuance  of  order,  and  with  the 
love  of  peace  in  its  steadfastness  it  has  followed  them  with 
an  unselfish  end. 

The  right  to  vote  is  the  right  of  every  person  who  is  a 
member  of  the  nation.  It  is  the*birthright  of  freedom.  It 
is  the  right  only  of  a  person,  that  is  one  in  whom  there  is 
the  realization  of  personality,  one  whose  action  is  self-deter- 

15 


226  THE  NATION. 

mined, — one  who  has  the  consciousness  of  law  and  of 
freedom  in  the  self-determination  of  his  own  spirit,  and  in 
that  alone  is  the  power  which  can  shape  the  course  and 
destination  of  the  state.  It  is  the  right  of  every  person 
who  is  a  member  of  the  nation,  that  is,  who  is  born  and 
educated  in  it,  as  the  nation  itself  is  not  simply  a  physical 
but  a  moral  organism.  It  is  in  the  assertion  of  this  right 
alone,  that  there  is  the  expression  of  the  political  will  of 
the  political  people.  In  this  alone  the  government  of  the 
nation  has  also  the  manifestation  of  its  divine  origin  and 
institution ;  as  personality  has  its  realization  only  in  the 
realization  of  divine  relations  and  the  fulfillment  of  the 
divine  will.  In  the  institution  of  righteousness  and  of  free- 
dom is  the  being  of  the  nation,  and  in  this  in  its  highest 
conception,  government  in  the  nation  is  manifested  as  a 
trust  and  a  right. 

The  aim  of  the  political  constitution  should  be,  to  give 
to  every  member  of  the  nation  who  is  a  person,  represen- 
tation in  it,  that  is,  every  actual  person  should  vote,  and 
none  beside.  This  and  this  alone  ascertains  the  actual  sov- 
ereignty of  the  political  people.  The  qualifications  which 
proceed  on  this  ground,  which  is  also  the  nature  of  the  act 
itself,  —  and  no  power  can  make  it  other  than  this,  —  alone 
give  expression  to  the  political  thought  and  political  will. 
These  qualifications  may  become  more  exactly  defined  in 
the  historical  development  of  the  political  people  ;  but  their 
aim  will  be  always  the  same.  These  qualifications  as  de- 
fined in  law  have  necessarily  the  form  of  a  general  law. 
Their  intent  is  the  exclusion  of  those  only  who  have  no 
will  of  their  own,  that  is,  no  personality.  Thus  children 
and  minors,  and  those  who  have  taken  bribes  or  made 
wagers,  and  the  imbecile  and  insane,  and  all  convicts  or 
criminals  are  not  allowed  to  vote.  The  government  of 
the  nation  is  founded  then  in  the  determination  of  its 
manhood  and  in  the  spirit  of  the  people,  and  not  in  the 
accidents  of  life,  as  property  or  occupation,  or  rank,  or 
color,  or  race. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  KEPKESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.      227 

The  vote  then,  as  the  representation  of  a  person,  pre- 
cludes all  special  distinction.  There  is  an  infinite  worth 
in  personality,  and  therefore  every  person  in  its  repre- 
sentation counts  one.  It  is  representative  of  the  whole  per- 
sonality. There  is  no  graduated  scale  in  which  to  estimate 
the  relative  worth  of  real  manhood,  or  the  valuation  of 
the  whole  moral  determination.  If  the  personality  of  man 
could  be  made  secondary,  then  by  a  graduated  standard 
the  most  extensive  system  of  a  plurality  of  votes  could  be 
adjusted  to  the  proportionate  worth  of  the  moral  determina- 
tion of  men,  and  many  votes  could  be  given  to  one,  and 
few  to  another ;  but  the  personality  of  none"  can  be  held 
thus  as  itself  inferior  and  its  all,  the  entire  moral  determina- 
tion in  its  integrity,  as  of  a  diminished  quality. 

To  confer  the  power  of  an  elector  upon  one  who  in  the 
course  of  nature  is  not  a  member  of  the  nation,  belongs 
only  to  the  nation  in  its  sovereignty.  There  is  for  every 
individual  as  such,  whether  citizen  or  stranger,  all  rights 
subsisting  in  the  necessary  relations  of  life,  that  is  all  civil 
rights ;  but  all  rights  subsisting  in  the,  nation  in  its  free- 
dom, that-  is  all  political  rights,  are  only  of  the  political 
body,  and  if  an  alien  be  received  and  made  a  member  of 
it,  it  must  be  by  the  act  of  the  nation  in  its  sovereignty. 
The  homely  phrase  of  the  law  is  —  to  get  naturalized ;  but 
this  is  not  a  slight  nor  easy  thing ;  and  nature  works,  even 
as  in  the  life  of  states,  slowly  and  patiently,  and  is  not  sub- 
ject to  the  act  of  legislatures,  or  the  administration  of 
courts.  The  Republic  is  indeed  to  welcome  the  stricken 
and  the  oppressed  for  conscience  sake  out  of  every  land, 
and  is  to  be  as  the  city  whose  gates  are  open  by  night  and 
by  day,  and  not  the  least  among  its  titles  is  that  of  the 
name  of  the  home  of  the  pilgrim ;  and  if  it  be  forgetful 
of  this,  it  loses  some  of  its  noblest  historical  traditions. 
But  to  admit  to  immediate  representation  whoever  may 
come  to  its  shores,  who  have  no  consciousness  of  the  aim 


228  THE  NATION. 

and  destination  of  the  nation,  and  no  participation  in  its 
political  spirit,  becomes  a  defect  of  government  and  is  a 
detriment  to  the  Republic.  To  bestow  upon  these  the 
same  political  power  with  those  born  and  educated  in 
the  nation  and  animated  by  its  design,  is  no  more  just, 
than  to  refer  the  decision  as  to  the  direction  of  a  house  or 
the  disposal  of  an  inheritance  to  some  transient  guest  who 
may  come  to  lodge  over  night  or  take  shelter  in  a  storm. 
They  have  no  apprehension  of  the  unity  and  continuity 
of  the  nation,  and  do  not  partake  of  its  conscious  spirit ; 
it  is  elsewhere  that  their  thoughts  turn  to  cherish  the 
memory  of  their  ancestors,  and  elsewhere  that  their  hopes 
look  for  the  home  of  their  children.  Thus,  there  are  Keltic 
and  Asiatic  populations  who  have  been  educated  under 
an  imperialism,  and  bring  with  them  imperial  tendencies 
which  involve  the  degradation  of  the  individual  personality. 
They  have  thus  no  clear  conception  of  freedom  and  of 
rights  which  subsist  in  personality,  nor  of  what  constitutes 
a  nation;  there  is  thus  often  among  the  Keltic  popula- 
tions a  merely  tribal  feeling,  and  the  nation  is  conceived 
as  itself  vested  in  a  race,  and  in  the  want  of  personality 
they  fall  under  the  control  of  some  priest  ^  demagogue. 
The  immediate  characteristic  of  the  Asiatic  populations 
is  this  want  of  personality.  Through  customs  which 
have  a  weight  which  the  occidental  mind  can  scarce- 
ly apprehend,  they  retain  their  attachment  to  the  land 
of  their  nativity.  They  have  here  no  enduring  home, 
and  regard  another  land  as  alone  sacred.  Thither  they 
turn  with  reverence  to  the  graves  of  their  ancestors,  and 
look  forward  themselves  to  finding  a  grave  in  it,  avoid- 
ing to  fall  in  battle  elsewhere,  and  refusing  elsewhere  to 
be  buried.  There  is  an  evil  in  the  accumulation  of  masses 
of  populations  whose  thought  and  spirit  separate  them  from 
the  nation,  and  who  are  subject  to  a  foreign  ecclesiastical 
or  political  influence  ;  but  the  evil  is  not  obviated  by  con- 
ceding to  them  a  political  power  which  has  no  root  in 


THE  NATION  AND   ITS  KEPKESENTATIVE  CONSTITUTION^/  229 

//  J     .  -T  J 

devotion  or  sacrifice,  and  is  inspire^  b^fto  lovely 5?here<  /M 
may  and   should,  in  the  prudence  of  the^srate,  be^Vgrne          J  - 
form  or  law  of  naturalization ;  but  to  refer  to  &fesQ  pop-;  - 
ulations  political  power,  with  no  discrimination,  myblves     rj^ 
danger  to  the  political  whole.  %x.       -ft 

It  is  thus,  also,  that  Indians  are  excluded  from  voting  |*» 
not  because  they  are  not  taxed,  but  because,  as  they  are*" 
subject  to  the  will  of  a  chief  and  absolutely  controlled 
by  it,  they   are   without   freedom ;  they  also  exist   in  a 
tribal  relation,  the  organization  of  a  race,  which  isolates 
them  from  the  organic  and  moral  'being  of  the  nation  ;  but 
in  withdrawing  from  this  tribal  relation,  they  come  upon 
a  national  position  and  should  be  regarded  as  members  of 
the  nation. 

There  have  been  some  qualifications  defining  the  right 
to  vote  which  claim  a  separate  notice.  The  qualification 
in  property,  maintained  by  Blackstone  as  the  sign  of  a 
conscious  freedom  and  independence  of  character,  has  an 
historical  presumption.  But  property  is  no  more  the  evi- 
dence than  it  is  the  basis  of  manhood.  It  has  always  in 
itself  too  great  power,  and  there  is  always  danger  that  it 
may  seek  to  subvert  character,  and  to  subordinate  the 
whole  to  selfish  ends.  This  pecuniary  condition  of  suf- 
frage tends,  also,  to  an  estimate  of  the  nation  itself  by  a 
pecuniary  consideration.  It  induces  the  disposition  to  re- 
gard the  government  as  the  agent  of  special  interests,  and 
in  the  crises  of  its  existence  there  has  been  the  inclina- 
tion, in  great  divided  interests  and  monopolies,  to  pursue 
exclusively  their  own  separate  ends.1  When  it  is  said 
that  the  owner  of  property  should  vote,  because  possession 
gives  a  stake  in  the  nation,  it  makes  self-interest  the  con- 
dition of  the  nation,  which  it  cannot  be  ;  and  as  in  these 

1  Mr.  Brownson  says,  "  The  mere  men  df  wealth,  the  bankers  and  brokers, 
are  those  who  exert  the  worst  influence  upon  the  state ;  their  maxim  is,  let  the 
state  take  care  of  the  rich,  and  the  rich  of  the  poor,  and  not  let  the  state  take 
care  of  the  weak,  for  the  strong  need  it  not."  —  The  American  Republic,  p.  383. 


230 


THE  NATION. 


crises  the  nation  may  call  for  the  sacrifice  of  property 
and  of  the  life  of  the  individual,  there  is  the  negation  of 
the  so-called  stake  in  it.  - 

But  a  property  qualification  has  its  premise  in  the  as- 
sumption that  the  nation  exists  primarily  to  protect  prop- 
erty. It  regards  security  as  the  only  end,  and  prefers 
Babylon  to  Judaea  if  only  the  ducats  are  stowed  away  more 
safely  in  it,  though  they  never  are.  But  the  residence  of 
government  in  property  is  consistent  only  with  the  organ- 
ization of  the  nation  in  certain  private  rights,  the  barbaric 
or  the  patrimonial  constitutions,  where  power  is  a  private 
estate.  Thus  when  property  has  been  made  the  exclusive 
qualification,  there  has  been  the  disposition  to  regard  a  vote 
as  something  which  one  possesses,  as  itself  property,  some- 
thing which  may  be  held  at  a  pecuniary  valuation,  and 
bartered  or  transferred. 

A  qualification  in  education,  or  more  strictly,  a  literary 
qualification,  as  the  ability  to  read  some  state  document  or 
to  write,  has  obtained  a  recent  advocacy.  In  so  far  as  in- 
telligence is  implied  in  the  conscious  freedom  and  self-de- 
termination of  the  will,  that  is,  in  so  far  as  its  action  has 
a  rational  content,  this  test  has  a  higher  worth  than  the 
preceding,  and  the  real  education  of  the  people,  in  which 
there  is  a  moral  more  than  an  intellectual  element,  is,  in 
another  phrase,  the  realization  of  personality.  But  the 
inquiry  is,  how  far  a  strictly  literary  qualification  is  indic- 
ative of  this.  If  it  was  the  only  qualification,  then  lads 
at  school,  on  passing  their  examinations,  could  vote.  The 
qualification  is  then  assumed  as  but  one,  with  certain 
others,  and  the  ability  to  read  or  write,  and  a  certain  tech- 
nical or  scientific  acquisition,  is  held  as  indicative  of  fitness 
for  the  offices  of  a  citizen,  so  that  all  lacking  this  are  pre- 
cluded from  its  highest  exercise. 

But  the  test  is  a  superficial  one,  and  perhaps  of  all  is 
the  most  artificial.  A  technical  or  scientific  acquisition 
is  not  the  evidence  of  the  real  education  of  the  people. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE  CONSTITUTION.  231 

Mr.  Hare  says  justly,  that  "no  science  can  reach  the 
depths  of  the  knowledge  painfully  won  in  the  daily  life, 
and  the  experience  of  man  and  woman."  The  life  of  the 
workman,  the  fulfillment  of  human  relationships  in  the 
family  and  the  community,  the  endeavor  of  men  in  the 
realities  of  life,  is  a  deeper  education  ;  and  in  work  rather 
than  in  a  certain  literary  or  scientific  acquisition,  is  the 
evidence  of  the  capacity  for  political  power. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  political  action  of  a  distinctly 
literary  or  scientific  class  to  justify  the  application  of  this 
test.1  They  have  seemed  more  often  to  be  controlled  by 
notions  or  theories,  or  by  some  vulgar  conceit  withdrawn 
from  politics  and  the  organic  life  of  the  people,  to  become 
only  a  learned  mob.  The  elements  of  character,  clearness, 
foresight,  and  the  self-determination  of  the  will,  are  not 
always  among  the  acquisitions  of  literature  or  science. 
Even  Comte  says,  "clear-sightedness,  wisdom  and  even 
consistency  of  thought,  are  qualities  which  are  very  inde- 
pendent of  learning." 

A  qualification  of  a  literary  or  scientific  form  for  polit- 
ical action  has  also  no  historical  justification.  Some  of 
the  most  intellectual  periods  in  the  course  of  a  people 
have  been  the  most  corrupt ;  they  have  been  characterized 
by  the  destruction  of  personality  and  the  coincident  decay 
of  national  life.  Greece  in  her  dissolution  was  crowded 
with  the  most  fluent  rhetoricians  and  the  most  subtle 
sophists,  and  her  citizens  became  at  once  the  slaves  and  the 
tutors  of  other  peoples ;  and  the  Greek  still  with  his  intel- 
lectual acuteness  is  destitute  of  the  most  primary  civic 
rirtues.  The  age  in  Rome  which  was  marked  by  the 

1  See  Milton's  reply  to  the  grammarian,  "  Whosoever  therefore  he  be,  though 
from  among  the  dregs  of  the  common  people,  that  you  are  so  keen  upon,  who- 
soever I  say  has  but  sucked  in  this  principle,  that  he  was  not  born  for  his 
prince,  but  for  God  and  his  country  ;  he  deserves  the  reputation  of  a  learned 
and  an  honest  and  a  wise  man  more,  and  is*  of  greater  use  in  the  world  than 
yourself.     For  such  a  one  is  learned  without  letters ;  you  have  letters  but  no 
I    learning,  that  understand  so  mam'  languages,  turn  over  so  many  volumes,  and 
i    pet  are  but  asleep  when  all  is  done." — Milton's  Works,  vol.  i.  p.  30. 


232  THE  NATION. 

transition  from  a  nation  to  an  empire,  although  its  creative 
power  in  literature  in  certain  forms  may  be  traced  to  a 
preceding  national  development,  was  yet  characterized  by 
a  wide  intellectual  culture,  and  a  rare  although  superficial 
refinement  in  letters.  The  movement  for  Secession  was 
marked  by  a  skill  in  its  leaders  that  could  ransack  his- 
tory for  their  legal  and  diplomatic  precedents ;  and  the 
growth  of  imperialism  in  England  has  drawn  to  itself  the 
almost  entire  support  of  the  literary  class  of  the  English 
race ;  but  literary  and  scientific  culture  is  not  always  in- 
dicative of  the  moral  strength  and  determination  of  a  peo- 
ple, and  the  intellect  divested  of  moral  spirit  is  not  a 
'  power  working  in  the  institution  of  righteousness,  which  is 
the  condition  of  national  being. 

But  a  literary  or  scientific  test  fails,  because  the  act  to 
which  it  is  to  apply  is  not  of  a  literary  or  scientific  charac- 
ter, and  the  qualification  must  be  conditioned  upon  the 
nature  of  the  act.  These  qualifications,  to  the  effect  that  a 
certain  amount  of  property  or  a  certain  degree  of  literary 
acquisition  shall  determine  the  fitness  for  the  duties  of  a 
citizen,  proceed  from  the  notion  that  the  character  of  man 
consists  not  in  what  he  is,  but  in  what  he  possesses  ;  that 
in  the  conditions  of  his  action  what  a  man  has  is  to  be  pre- 
ferred to  what  he  is. 

The  real  education  of  the  people  is  to  be  provided  for 
in  the  organization  of  political  power.  They  for  whom,  in 
the  want  of  a  realized  personality,  the  exercise  of  elec* 
toral  power  is  not  possible,  yet  have  a  right  to  the  aid  of 
all  in  the  nation  that  may  tend  to  its  development.  They 
are  not  to  be  left  in  political  indifference  because  desti- 
tute of  the  capacity  for  political  power.  They  have  the 
right  to  be  educated  by  the  state  for  the  state.  Their  edu- 
cation is  to  be  regarded  as  the  necessity  of  the  state,  and 
in  the  endeavor  toward  the  development  of  their  personal 
power,  the  nation  advances  toward  its  destination.  It  is 
the  formation  of  an  independent  manhood,  so  that  he  who 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.    233 

has  reached  his  majority  in  years,  is  always  in  his  political 
majority. 

The  correspondent  evidence  of  the  law  of  representa- 
tion is  in  the  fact  that  every  divergence  from  it,  as  the 
sequence  of  a  false  premise,  issues  in  disaster.  The  sov- 
ereignty and  representation  of  numbers,  and  the  entrust- 
ment  of  political  power  to  those,  who  have  in  themselves 
no  ground  for  it,  has  only  this  result.  There  is  no  basis 
for  electoral  rights,  when  there  is  no  capacity  for  elect- 
oral action.  The  force  which  is  impersonal  in  the  state, 
cannot  be  called  upon  to  shape  the  destination  of  the  state. 
The  crowd,  that  is,  the  disorganized  elements, .  the  an- 
archic fragments,  are  not  to  be  called  to  the  government 
of  the  state.  The  power  referred,  on  the  premise  of  some 
abstract  notion  of  rights  in  representation,  to  this  impersonal 
mass,  is  a  contradiction.  This  force  does  not  and  cannot 
offer  a  vote,  when  the  occasion  is  open  to  it  by  electoral 
laws.  Its  action  is  expressive  of  no  free  and  conscious  pur- 

-  pose ;  and  called  to  act  in  the  institution  of  freedom,  and  to 
incorporate  it  in  the  state,  it  moves  only  as  some  fate.  In 

:  the  construction  of  a  moral  order,  it  sweeps  on  as  a  phys- 

;  ical  force,  not  as  if  directed  by  an  inner  will,  but  by  a 
mere  momentum.  It  is  the  casting  into  the  scales,  when 

ji  the  highest  issues  are  to  be  decided,  of  a  dead  weight.  It 
drifts,  and  like  all  forces  not  guided  in  human  life  by  a  per- 

f-  sonal  power,  it  drifts  downwards.  Its  course,  apart  from 
the  real  will  and  freedom  of  the  people,  is  so  inevitably 
toward  the  wrong,  that  the  language  of  a  clear  and  self- 
determinate  spirit  is,  "I  have  not  gone  with  the  multitude 

j  to  do  evil."  It  is  the  building  not  of  an  order,  but  of  a  pan- 
demonium; it  makes  the  nation  the  confusion  of  strange 
tongues,  and  the  Babel  of  incoherent  and  unmeaning 
voices.  It  creates  a  power  which  is  not  the  will  of  the 
people,  but  is  without  the  consciousness  of  the  unity  and 
order  of  the  people. 


234  THE  NATION. 

The  object  of  every  political  constitution  is  to  exclude 
this  element,  that  is,  the  impersonal  mass,  from  authority 
in  the  state.  The  reference  of  power  to  it  subjects  the 
organization  of  society  to  brutal  force,  while  the  whole 
effort  of  civilization  has  been  to  wrest  it  from  that  blind 
and  unthinking  sway.  It  is  this  which  has  been  the  con- 
stant aim  and  the  condition  of  freedom. 

This  reference  of  power  to  mere  numbers,  that  is,  the 
impersonal  mass,  is  justified  by  no  right.  It  is  a  barren 
sceptre,  and  in  the  defect  of  sovereignty  in  itself  it  cannot 
act  for  its  institution  in  the  state.  It  is  not  the  assertion  of 
the  sovereignty  of  the  people,  but  the  negation  of  sover- 
eignty and  of  the  people.  Its  exclusion  is  no  violation  of 
the  law  of  democracy,  but  is  necessary  to  the  assertion 
of  democracy.  Its  exclusion  is  not  despotism,  but  its  in- 
clusion is  the  worst  despotism,  —  the  absolutism  of  a 
multitude,  not  the  government  of  a  free  people.  It  is  a 
rabble  of  men  which  is  called  to  the  expression  of  the 
thought  and  purpose  of  the  political  people.  It  is  a  form- 
less waste,  out  of  which  the  determination  of  the  form  of 
the  state  is  sought.  It  is  the  necessary  degradation  of  the 
whole,  and  the  state  supplies  in  itself  the  instrument  of 
corruption.  It  does  not  act  with  freedom,  and  it  will  not 
act  for  freedom.  It  falls  under  the  influence  of  parties 
and  sects,  to  be  used  for  their  special  ends.  It  becomes 
subservient  to  men  who  will  employ  it  for  the  accomplish- 
ment of  selfish  schemes,  or  the  furtherance  of  their  own 
ulterior  interests.  Its  subjection  is  to  the  domination  of 
those  who  can  rule  masses,  but  cannot  rule  freemen,  and 
it  becomes  the  instrument  of  the  designs  of  the  demagogue 
or  the  priest  or  millionaire. 

The  multitude  is  everywhere  dangerous  to  the  state ; 
but  the  bestowal  of  power  upon  it  is  to  place  the  arms 
of  her  arsenals  in  the  hands  of  the  blind.  It  is  the  un- 
reason of  the  state  when  it  calls  upon  ignorance  and  vice 
and  crime  to  determine  its  career. 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.    235 

This  investiture  of  the  impersonal  mass  with  political 
power,  —  the  mere  representation  of  numbers,  — justifies 
all  the  scorn  which  has  been  spoken  of  it  by  the  best  of 
men.  There  is  a  comprehensive  truth  in  the  words,  so 
exact,  as  the  political  expression  in  Shakespeare  always  is, 
—  where 

"  Wisdom 

Cannot  conclude  but  by  the  yea  and  no 
Of  general  ignorance,  —  it  must  omit 
Real  necessities,  and  give  way  the  while 
To  unstable  slightness.    Purpose  so  barr'd,  itfollow»t 
Nothing  is  done  to  purpose.'1'' 

The  result  is,  that  it  — 

"  Bereaves  the  state 

Of  that  integrity  which  should  become  it, 
Not  having  the  power  to  do  the  good  it  would, 
For  the  ill  which  doth  control  it."  l 

The  result  of  the  bestowal  of  political  power  upon  the 
mass  appears  in  the  government  of  the  municipality  of  New 
York.  With  the  qualifications  prescribed  by  electoral  laws, 
the  danger  disappears  in  a  great  commonwealth,  while  it  is 
apparent  in  a  city  where  large  numbers  are  congregated, 
whose  education  under  an  imperial  or  ecclesiastical  dom- 
ination has  left  them  without  freedom.  The  people  are 
used  to  increase  the  wealth  of  a  few  individuals. 

There  has  been  a  special  justification  sought  for  this 
bestowal  of  electoral  power  in  its  educational  influence 
upon  the  individual,  as  invoking  a  sense  of  responsibility. 
It  is  true  that  the  nation,  without  reference  to  the  exercise 
of  electoral  power  with  this  object,  is  the  mightier  power 
in  the  education  of  the  race  ;  but  the  bestowal  of  electoral 
power,  with  the  special  design  of  the  education  of  certain 
individuals,  avoids  the  content  of  the  act  and  considers  it 
primarily  in  the  interest  of  the  individual  apart  from  the 
state.  Its  value  as  an  educational, influence  upon  the  mass 
is  not  apparent,  since  in  the  want  of  independent  action  it 

1  Cmnolanus,  act  3,  sc.  1. 


236  THE  NATION. 

becomes  the  instrument  of  any  who  may  get  dominion 
over  it ;  it  induces  also  a  low  conception  of  a  vote  and  of 
the  government  itself.  The  gain  which  may  appear  in 
some  instances  is  at  the  most  slight,  in  comparison  with 
the  detriment  to  the  whole.  The  education  of  the  few  by 
this  method  becomes  also  as  costly  as  it  is  perilous,  as  for 
instance  in  the  municipality  of  New  York. 

This  bestowal  of  electoral  power  has  been  justified  also 
as  a  means  of  protection,  and  has  been  called  by  a  senator 
"  the  protection  of  ignorance  and  weakness."  To  call  upon 
ignorance  in  this  way  to  protect  itself,  is  to  impose  upon  it 
an  office  of  intelligence  and  decision  of  character.  It  is 
only  in  justice  and  foresight  that  the  protection  of  igno- 
rance and  weakness  is  found.  When  the  control  of  the 
state  is  given  to  ignorance  the  safeguard  of  rights  is  de- 
stroyed. The  vote  of  the  city  of  New  York  is  cast  blindly 
against  the  public  interest,  and  subserves  the  private 
schemes  of  men.  If  protection  alone,  and  not  a  realized 
freedom,  were  the  end  of  the  state,  power  assigned  to  igno- 
rance and  weakness  would  not  ensure  it. 

The  necessary  nature  of  electoral  power  discloses  the 
evil  of  a  condition  of  affairs  which,  in  the  abandonment  of 
character  and  freedom  and  the  degradation  of  personality, 
is  fraught  with  the  deepest  corruption.  In  the  absence  of 
the  organization  of  the  civil  service  and  administration,  it  is 
the  condition  in  which  public  offices  and  trusts  become 
the  instruments  of  power,  so  that  their  places  and  pay 
are  held  to  further  private  and  partisan  designs,  and  as 
agents  or  tools  to  control  men  to  certain  special  uses  and 
ends.  The  profits  of  office  are  used  to  buy  voters,  and 
the  promise  of  office  is  held  before  them  as  an  equivalent 
for  their  vote,  or  the  threat  of  removal  is  used  to  intimi- 
date them  in  their  vote.  Their  vote  is  unfree  and  of  it- 
self is  made  the  instrument  of  their  corruption.  It  works 
with  injury  alike  to  the  individual  and  to  the  whole.  It  is 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS   REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.    237 

the  more  immoral,  for  it  is  the  use  of  the  powers  of  the 
nation  to  subvert  its  moral  order.  Thus  there  are  those 
who  refrain  from  the  thorough  organization  of  a  civil  ser- 
vice upon  the  simplest  maxims  of  economy  and  prudence, 
because  they  can  use  its  offices  to  further  private  and  par- 
tisan ends  and  to  build  up  their  own  power,  and  an  imper- 
fect civil  organization  becomes  the  pretext  for  their  course. 
It  is  the  undermining  of  the  freedom  and  the  defeat  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  people. 

The  public  offices  and  trusts  of  the  nation  are  held  as 
patronage.     The  word  is  consistent  with  the  barbaric  con- 
stitutions in  which  power  was  held  as  a  private    estate  ; 
the  ruler  was  a  patron  and  the  place  belonged  to  his  patri- 
mony.    Yet  however  democratic  the  pretense  of  the  form 
of  the  state  may  be,  to  hold  these  positions  as  a  means 
for  private  or  partisan  ends  is  beneath  the  barbaric  consti- 
tutions, for  if  they  allowed  this  patronage  to  the  prince,  it 
was  because  he  alone  was  presumed  to  be  in  identity  with 
the  state.     In  the  existing  condition,  the  offices  and  trusts 
i  are  held,  not  as  in  the  service  of  a  free  state,  but  as  an 
imperial  boon.     It  is,  in  the  interest  of  a  class  of  so-called 
:  politicians,   the  building  of  a  power  independent  of  the 
s  people,  and  to  become  a  means  of  their  degradation.     To 
allow  these  men  to  offer  offices  as  a  recompense  for  action 
tin  their  behalf,  or  to  remove  or  threaten  any  with  removal 
from  offices  they  have  faithfully  administered,  on  account 
:  of  their  independence  of  political  action,  is  bribery.     And 
j  trhen  workmen  in  national  armories  and  navy  yards,  who 
are   dependent  for  their  daily  support   upon   their   daily 
(labor,  have  their  places  used  as  an  instrument  to  control 
[their  vote  for  private  or  partisan  ends,  the  political  crime 
jean  scarcely  be  surpassed.     The  national  offices  and  trusts 
>are  employed  to  control  men  as  evil  dominations  control 
I  them,  in   the   subversion   of  their  freedom.      They   are 
driven  to  vote  as  a  gang.     It  is  the  same  in  result,  when 
•  the  bribe  is  tendered  by  an  individual  or  a  party,  and  in 


238  THE  NATION. 

money  in  hand,  or  a  place  of  corresponding  pecuniary 
value,  and  there  is  no  distinction  if  the  workman  be  dis- 
charged from  a  plantation  or  a  navy  yard,  or  driven  from  a 
farm  or  an  armory  on  account  of  his  vote. 

The  public  service  is  conducted  not  only  without  regard 
to  prudence  and  economy,  and  honest  and  efficient  adminis- 
tration, but  national  offices  are  used  by  those  in  power  to 
retain  power  and  promote  their  private  ends  ;  or  in  the 
triumph  of  a  party,  they  are  held  as  booty  won  on  the 
field,  to  be  divided  among  its  retainers.  The  consequence 
is  also  the  filling  of  public  offices  with  bad  and  irresponsi- 
ble men.  The  vote  of  those  who  are  thus  controlled  is  no 
longer  a  free,  that  is,  a  responsible  act,  but  is  the  service  of 
a  dependent  and  the  assent  of  a  valet.  It  has  no  more 
worth  than  the  act  of  a  slave,  the  man  who  does  not  know 
his  own  mind  and  cannot  call  his  will  his  own.  The  cor- 
ruption works  in  those  who  give  and  those  who  take  the 
bribe,  and  one  who  uses  these  means  to  control  men  be- 
comes destitute  of  self-respect  as  he  destroys  the  self-re- 
spect of  others.  It  frustrates  the  free  and  independent 
purpose  of  the  people,  and  there  is  in  it  the  degradation 
of  character. 

The  nature  of  electoral  power  is  inconsistent,  also,  with 
the  singular  proposition,  that  in  certain  sections  or  dis- 
tricts, representation  should  be  made  necessary,  and  a  vote 
should  be  compulsory.  It  has  been  said,  that  men  might 
be  required  to  send  representatives  to  the  government,  but 
this  would  be  a  form  with  no  representative  character. 
It  would  be  only  the  authority  compelling  the  act  which 
was  represented,  and  this  could  act  immediately  with 
better  consistency.  The  action  when  thus  required  would 
not  be  the  representation  of  free  men,  and  would  not  have 
the  worth  of  the  power  which  in  some  plebiscite  obeys  an 
imperial  will, 


THE  NATION   AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.   239 

The  necessary  principle  of  representation  illustrates  the 
strength  and  also  the  weakness,  in  that  conception  which 
describes  the  government  as  the  representation  of  public 
opinion,  or  public  opinion  as  the  basis  of  the  representative 
constitution.  It  is  true  that  public  opinion  appears  only  in 
the  organization  of  society,  and  there  is  in  it  the  indication 
of  an  aim  beyond  the  private  and  separate  end  of  the  in- 
dividual. But  government  is  not  constituted  in  the  rep- 
resentation of  public  opinion,  and*  there  is  not  in  this  the 
sovereignty  or  the  freedom  of  the  people. 

There  is  in  public  opinion  the  unformed  thought  of 
men,  or  thought  as  it  is  being  formed.  It  thus  takes  its 
color  from  the  changing  impulse  and  emotion  and  passion 
;  of  the  moment,  and  reflects  its  hopes  and  fears.  It  denotes, 
indeed,  in  some  phases,  the  purpose  that  will  endure  and 
assert  itself  with  irresistible  might;  and  in  this  is  the  ex- 
pression of  the  conviction  of  the  people,  that  will  hold  on 
against  the  treachery  of  those  who  have  been  called  to 
power.  It  is  thus  that  it  indicates  often  the  course  and 
tendencies  of  historic  movements.  But  it  denotes  often 
the  confused  agitation  rather  than  the  stable  purpose,  the 
impulse  instead  of  the  deliberation  of  the  people.  It  is 
the  rude  and  crude  thought,  often  obscured  by  prejudice, 
and  it  acts  often  in  an  imperfect  knowledge  of  events.  Its 
organs  thus  are  informal  forces,  and  not  recognized  in  the 
constitution  of  the  state ;  as,  for  instance,  the  popular  ru- 
mor, that  is,  the  mere  "  report  of  a  report,"  the  public  lec- 
ture, the  newspaper,  the  course  of  the  exchange,  the  talk 
of  the  street.  It  is  always  undefined,  and  there  is  no 
power  whose  authentic  expression  it  is  so  difficult  to  ascer- 
tain, or  which  is  so  open  to  imposition,  since  some  alien 
purpose  may  often  raise  the  noise  and  counterfeit  the  voice 
and  assume  all  the  guises  of  public  opinion  ;  there  is  no 
vehicle  of  public  opinion,  as  the  newspaper  or  public  lec- 
ture, but  may  be  set  in  motion  by  an  alien  power.  It  is 
indeed  the  secret  or  anonymous  form  of  these  agents,  as 


240  THE  NATION. 

the  common  rumor  or  newspaper  article,  that  thus  enables 
them  to  serve  a  foreign  opinion. 

The  statesman  must  learn  to  estimate  the  strength  and 
the  weakness  of  public  opinion,  and  when  and  how  to  re- 
gard and  to  disregard  it.  It  is  always  to  be  considered 
and  weighed  as  a  positive  force  in  the  conduct  of  affairs, 
and  those  who  acted  in  indifference  to  it,  would  expose 
their  measures  to  the  unnecessary  risk  of  disaster.  It  is  to 
be  regarded  in  any  course  of  action,  with  respect  to  what 
it  may  indicate  in  the  mind  of  the  people.  But  so  far 
from  an  immediate  representation  of  it,  it  is  always  to  be 
held  as  a  force  which  has  not  even  a  law  of  discrimination, 
whereby  its  own  thought  and  purpose  may  become  clear. 
The  disposition  to  overestimate  it  is  a  characteristic  of 
weakness.  It  is  more  often  not  itself  clear,  and  instead  of 
being  the  guide  of  the  state,  needs  a  firmer  intelligence  to 
guide  it.  He  who  would  have  even  its  support  in  the  long 
run,  must  be  strong  alike  to  lead  and  to  resist ;  he  must 
learn  to  apprehend  the  enduring  purpose  of  the  people,  and 
to  hold  it  against  betrayal.  The  danger  is  that  men  who 
are  untrue  to  themselves,  and  thus  without  self-respect  or 
rectitude,  will  listen  for  it  blindly,  and  follow  its  uncertain 
voices,  until  in  their  weakness  they  lose  their  foothold,  and 
are  swept  away  by  its  current. 

To  regard  the  representation,  therefore,  as  that  of  public 
opinion,  is  obviously  defective.  It  cannot  and  is  not  to 
govern.  To  regard  the  government  as  only  its  represent- 
ative, would  argue  a  defect  of  will.  There  would  be  in 
it  the  subversion  of  personality.  The  power  which  be- 
came its  exponent  to  indicate  its  courses  and  the  shift  in 
its  changes,  would  be  no  longer  a  real  government.  It 
would  open  the  way  to  "unstable  slightness."  It  would 
yield  in  the  panic  of  unformed  thought.  It  would  be  the 
regiment  of  those  who  start  at  the  shaking  of  the  leaves. 
In  the  agitation  and  surging  of  its  crowd,  they  that  would 
aim  only  to  follow  it  must  leave  the  place  of  leaders,  and 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS   REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.    241 

become  lost  in  its  multitude  as  their  call  is  drowned  in  its 
tumult.  If  they  rise  for  a  moment  upon  it,  it  is  only  to  be 
swept  away  by  its  tide. 

The  peril  is  thus  in  regarding  public  opinion,  not  to  con- 
sider what  it  may  indicate,  nor  what  may  be  its  force,  but 
blindly  to  obey  it.  Then  in  this  servility  there  is  the  pros- 
tration of  manhood.  Then  it  is  made  the  substitute  for  the 
conviction  of  duty,  and  a  foundation  is  sought  in  it  instead 
of  the  steadfastness  which  is  "  buttressed  in  conscience 
and  invincible  will."  To  turn  from  a  central  rectitude, 
and  the  inner  light,  and  the  eternal  word,  to  this  uncertain 
voice,  which  has  in  itself  no  law  by  which  it  may  become 
clear,  is  to  follow  the  shout  of  the  multitude.  It  is  the 
abdication  of  government  when  statesmen  look  only  to  the 
popular  voice  in  its  momentary  changes,  and  seek  the  ora- 
cles that  peep  and  mutter,  and  join  in  the  common  super- 
stition that  calls  for  its  favorite  magicians  and  soothsayers. 
At  last  the  inevitable  weakness  of  these  men  incites  only 
the  contempt  of  the  people  whom  they  could  not  gov- 
ern, and  whom  they  could  not  guide  when  called  to  go 
before  it. 

There  is  another  phrase  which  has  become  the  formula 
of  a  certain  scheme  in  representation  —  the  representation 
of  minorities.  This  presumes  an  arbitrary  division  of  the 
majority  and  the  minority,  and  then  asserts  an  injustice  in 
the  reference  of  the  conclusion  in  political  action  to  the 
former.  The  principle  which  it  aims  to  establish  is  the 
actual  representation  of  persons  ;  but  it  has  been  made 
complex  not  only  by  not  apprehending  the  necessary  prin- 
ciple, which  alone  gives  it  consistency,  but  by  the  intro- 
duction of  extraneous  notions,  as  for  instance,  the  proposi- 
tion for  a  plurality  of  votes. 

While  the  aim  is  always  to  be  an  ampler  and  more 
perfect  organization  in  the  representation  of  persons,  this 
principle  demands  the  exclusion  of  whim  and  willfulness, 

' 


242  THE  NATION. 

the  mere  caprice  of  men.  It  also  demands  the  clearer 
determination  which  is  implied  in  the  representation  of 
persons ;  and  as  the  principle  is  embodied  in  the  nation, 
the  government  becomes  more  resolute  and  more  positive. 
The  government  is  necessarily  to  have  strength  and  energy 
of  purpose,  and  authority  is  to  have  a  clear  and  unequivo- 
cal assertion;  and  so  vast  an  impersonal  mass  is  already 
allowed  to  act,  that  the  form  of  the  political  decision  of  the 
majority  alone  may  give  a  positive  and  conclusive  expres- 
sion to  the  political  will.  In  another  form  there  might 
result  the  most  grave  disaster  in  a  paralysis  of  power  and 
will. 

The  charge  which  is  associated  with  this  phrase  of  a 
tyranny  of  the  majority,  has  no  justification  on  the  postu- 
late assumed,  nor  in  the  course  of  government.  There 
has  been  in  history  no  power  so  devoid  of  tyranny  as  the 
political  majority ;  and  the  more  frequent  invasion  of 
tyranny  in  modern  nations  has  been  in  the  effort  through 
violence  to  override  the  will  of  the  majority  of  the  political 
people,  when  asserted  in  the  order  of  law.  If  the  ma- 
jority is  actually  tyrannical  in  its  spirit  and  intent,  no 
scheme  for  the  protection  of  minorities,  which  alone  can 
be  sustained  by  the  majority,  would  avail,  and  tyranny  in 
some  form  would  be  inevitable.  It  might  be  inferred  from 
the  assault  upon  the  political  majority,  that  the  oppression 
of  the  world  had  been  consequent  upon  the  political  action 
of  the  majority  of  the  political  people  ;  but  the  fact  is  that 
the  tyranny  has  always  been  the  power  of  the  minority 
acting  with  no  conformance  to  a  constitutional  order,  as 
the  despot  or  dynasty,  the  hereditary  or  monetary  class, 
some  family  or  collection  of  families,  bound  by  a  tie  among 
themselves ;  and  these  have  held  the  whole  as  their  pos- 
session, and  subordinated  it  to  their  own  special  ends. 
The  majority  also  is  constantly  changing  and  being  re- 
solved in  the  people,  but  these  powers  perpetuate  them- 
selves. The  assault  upon  the  political  majority  has  often 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.    243 

seemed  to  start  from  the  premise  that  its  act  is  held  as  the 
standard  of  truth,  and  not  as  the  form  for  ascertaining  in 
the  political  order  the  determination  of  the  political  people, 
and  for  the  enactment  of  laws  which  are  over  all.  The 
political  majority  has  always  been  the  method  of  ascertain- 
ing the  conclusion  of  a  representative  body,  as  for  instance 
in  England,  where  not  only  the  sovereignty  of  the  parlia- 
ment is  assumed,  but  where  there  exist  no  limitations 
upon  its  power  corresponding  in  force  to  those  in  the 
United  States,  and  its  members  are  elected  by  a  majority, 
and  while  its  law  is  enacted  by  a  majority,  submission  is 
commonly  rendered  to  it,  while  of  course  no  just  eifort  is 
prevented,  to  effect  its  change  or  repeal.1 

In  the  past  the  will  of  the  majority  has  been  the  most 
beneficent  form  in  which  the  government  of  the  political 
people  has  been  instituted.  There  has  been  in  it  a  more 
constant  recognition  of  a  principle  of  right  which  is  over 
all,  and  an  endeavor  to  substitute  it  for  the  arbitrary  ac- 
tion of  an  individual  or  a  class ;  and  it  has  sought,  though  far 
from  its  better  realization,  more  steadily  the  well-being  of 
the  whole  against  the  design  of  a  few  as  an  individual  or 
a  class,  and  far  more  unfrequently  than  they  has  it  been 
diverted  from  its  end. 

There  is  an  illustration  often  drawn  from  the  action  of 
the  mass,  or  the  fragments  of  a  disorganized  society,  against 
the  action  of  the  organic  people.  The  cry  of  a  Judaean 
mob  or  a  Roman  rabble  is  made  an  argument  of  accu- 
sation against  the  nation  and  the  expression  of  the  or- 
ganic will.  But  in  these  instances,  the  illustration  is  of 

1  The  form  of  representation  was  a  subject  of  discussion,  in  the  Colonial 
period.  "  The  Governor,  Commissioners,  and  Council  took  upon  them  the  leg- 
islative power,  and  the  People  were  governed  by  their  Ordinances  until  an  as- 
sembly was  called  which  privilege  was  then  declared  to  be  the  People's  Right." 
—  "A  great  part  of  the  injustice  done  in  the  Colony  may  be  ascribed  to  an  un- 
equal proportion  in  representation."  —  Samuel  Mulford,  1714.  Doc.  Hist,  of  N. 
1'.,  vol.  iii.  p.  367. 


244  THE  NATION. 

the  influence  of  imperialism.  It  was  when  the  national 
spirit  and  life  of  Judaea  was  lost,  and  her  unity  was  broken 
in  the  increase  and  pretension  of  parties  and  sects,  that 
a  mob  was  gathered,  and  the  crowd,  that  shouted  for  the 
release  of  Barabbas  the  robber,  and  for  the  condemna- 
tion of  one  who  came  to  manifest  the  power  of  a  king  in 
the  service  of  humanity,  appeared  when  the  multitude  had 
already  learned  to  cry,  "Caesar  is  king;  we  have  no  king 
but  Caesar."  This  is  no  illustration  of  the  action  of  a 
people,  but  of  the  mob  which  is  not  a  people ;  it  is  no  argu- 
ment for  accusation  against  the  people,  but  is  the  evidence 
of  the  degradation  of  men  under  an  imperialism. 

In  this  principle  the  political  spirit  and  political  will  has 
its  true  expression.  It  is  to  be  held  as  a  constant  aim, 
and  there  can  be  no  estimate  of  the  higher  power  which 
it  will  bring.  But  the  change  in  the  application  always 
in  larger  and  nobler-  forms,  can  be  the  result  of  no  laws, 
and  it  is  to  come  in  the  wisdom  of  the  state.  It  is  to  come 
in  the  development  of  the  state,  and  not  before  its  time, 
when  it  could  involve  only  peril  and  disaster  to  the 
whole. 

In  this  period,  as  in  every  period  of  transition,  when 
the  order  of  things  is  disturbed  by  a  vast  migration  of 
races,  there  is  so  large  and  indefinite  an  impersonal  mass 
casting  its  heavy  weight  in  elections,  that  its  uncertain  in- 
crease is  to  be  guarded  against,  and  the  change  which  has 
elements  of  progress  must  be  in  reality  as  in  form,  and  in 
the  development  of  the  nation  in  its  moral  being.  The 
conditions  and  qualifications  of  electoral  power  have  a  uni- 
versal premise  and  law,  but  the  aphorism  de  minimis  non 
curat  lex  is  necessary,  and  while  this  in  individual  instances 
and  to  certain  persons  may  involve  an  apparent  wrong,  yet 
the  extension  of  political  power  to  the  inclusion  in  electoral 
action  of  a  vast  number  who  have  no  freedom  of  will, 


THE  NATION  AND  ITS  REPEESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.      245 

and  no  capacity  for  political  action,  involves  a  far  greater 
wrong  to  the  higher  personality  of  the  nation,  and  the 
detriment  of  the  whole. 

The  electoral  right  is  a  political  right,  and  affects  prima- 
rily the  political  people,  and  it  should  have  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  whole  its  enduring  guaranties,  and  its  sanctions 
should  be  established  in  the  supreme  law.  The  constitu- 
tion defines  the  conditions  of  electoral  power,  and  the 
writings  of  President  Madison  indicate  that  it  designed  this, 
but  it  defines  them  as  inclusive  of  the  conditions  estab- 
lished in  the  administrative  order  of  each  commonwealth 
for  the  election  of  its  lower  house,  and  the  more  definite 
description  is  referred  to  the  commonwealth.  It  is  true 
that  there  is  a  certain  advantage  in  this,  since  an  extension 
of  suffrage  might  be  made  in  the  commonwealth,  which 
in  its  limited  sphere,  would  not  involve  the  peril  that  might 
result  in  an  extension  through  the  whole,  and  the  method 
of  amendment  in  the  constitution  of  the  commonwealth  is 
more  free ;  but  there  is  often  wanting  in  the  separate  com- 
monwealths the  spirit  which  pervades  the  political  whole, 
and  there  is  a  want  of  the  comprehension  of  the  well- 
being  of  the  whole,  and  the  conditions  in  each  common- 
wealth may  differ  so  widely  as  to  impair  the  unity  of  action 
in  the  whole. 

By  an  ingenious  exegesis  and  collocation  of  clauses  in 
the  constitution,  the  specific  designation  of  the  qualifica- 
tions of  an  elector  may  now  be  claimed  as  within  the 
power  of  the  Congress,  but  the  assertion  of  political  rights 
must  require  no  ingenious  argumentation.  There  is  not 
that  the  stable  ground  necessary  for  the  institution  of 

hts,  and  the  argument  on  which  they  are  assumed  to  rest 
lay  be  met  by  some  other  argument,  and  argument  is  not 
iclusion.  The  indifference  of  this  school  to  the  secur- 

ice  of  clear  and  express  guaranties  for  rights  in  the  posi- 
ive  law,  is  the  source  of  the  distrust  of  its  statesmanship 


246  THE  NATION. 

with  the  people.  The  disposition  to  be  satisfied  with,  some 
argument,  however  subtle,  indicates  the  defect  in  the 
thought  of  those  who  dwell  in  the  abstract  conceptions  of 
rights,  rather  than  toil  for  their  substantial  realization  in 
institutions. 

The  Republic  is  constituted  in  the  representation  of  per- 
sons. There  is  in  this  the  institution  of  the  actual  sove- 
reignty and  freedom  of  the  people.  It  is  the  organization 
of  the  republic  in  the  democratic  principle.  There  is 
strictly  no  democratic  form  of  the  state.  There  may  have 
been  at  a  certain  interval,  in  some  of  the  municipalities 
of  Greece,  in  the  organization  of  the  whole  people  in  a 
public  assembly,  some  correspondence  to  it,  but  it  was  nec- 
essarily limited,  and  there  is  no  historical  nation  but  tran- 
scends the  possibility  of  a  democratic  .form.  But  while 
there  is  no  democratic  form  of  the  state,  there  is  a  demo- 
cratic principle.  It  is  the  principle,  in  which  every  per- 
son who  is  a  member  of  the  nation  is  to  be  called  to  act  in 
the  normal  determination  of  its  government,  and  the  gov- 
ernment is  to  be  in  the  name  of  the  whole.  The  form 
of  the  state  in  which  the  democratic  principle  is  realized  is 
the  republic. 

The  electoral  law  is  the  law  of  the  Republic.  This  law 
has  in  the  most  varying  forms  the  wider  historical  justifi- 
cation. The  only  comparison  would  be  with  the  law  of 
hereditary  succession,  and  the  latter  claim  can  scarcely  be 
sustained,  even  with  the  long  monotony  incident  to  its 
periods.  The  latter  has  assumed  an  apparent  security, 
since  it  has  an  immediate  provision  for  the  future  ;  but 
to  leave  the  government  to  the  accident  of  birth,  and 
to  restrict  it  to  the  line  of  a  certain  family  descent,  with 
the  contingency  of  the  intervals  which  are  described  as  a 
regency,  is  not  the  most  provident  constitution.  It  has 
been  from  century  to  century  interrupted  by  a  disputed 
succession;  and  where  the  hereditary  principle  has  been 


NATION  AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.      247 

lintained,  as  in  England,  in  historical  crises  it  has  been 
ivowed,  as  in  the  revolution  of  1688  ;  and  these  crises 
ive  been  more  often  the  precedents  of  national  power, 
le  sovereignty  in  certain  families,  as  in  England,  has 
become  only  a  formal  sovereignty,1  that  is,  only  the 
jtitution  of  sovereignty.  There  was  courage  and  chivalry 
the  house  of  Plantagenet,  and  there  was  strength  to 
le  in  the  house  of  Tudor,  and  there  was  always  a  courtly 
tity  and  recognition  of  public  duties  and  public  offices 
in  the  house  of  Stuart,  but  it  is  difficult  to  associate  a 
conception  of  sovereignty  with  the  existing  house,  and  in 
this  aspect  the  later  line  of  its  kings  seems  a  sad  and 
fantastic  procession.  The  families  which  have  held  the 
government  as  an  inheritance,  have  not  differed  from 
other  families  ;  they  have  not  been  exempt  from  the  law 
in  which  the  sins  of  the  father  are  visited  upon  the  chil- 
dren, nor  could  they  claim  more  than  the  blessing  which 
showeth  mercy  unto  thousands.  A  recent  writer  has  said 
that  the  constitution  of  England,  its  king  and  peerage, 
rest  upon  a  power  of  great  influence,  although  held 
slightly  by  the  philosophers,  the  power  of  visibility.  It 
is  rather  the  opposite,  the  power  of  illusion.  The  haze  of 
old  political  traditions  veils  them  from  the  sight,  and  in 
their  elevation  above  the  people  they  are  not  visible  as 
they  actually  are.  The  hereditary  principle  is  thus  main- 
tained in  a  sovereignty  with  indifference  to  the  actual 
character  of  the  monarch,  or  it  is  an  institution  without 
reference  to  a  person  ;  negative  qualities  conform  to  it,  and 
there  is  in  it  no  representation  of  the  nation  as  a  person, 
and  only  by  some  figment  it  is  described  as  a  national 
device,  —  "  only  the  dot  over  the  i." 

1  In  the  constitution  of  England,  the  crown  has  not  the  strength  which  the 
executive  has  in  the  United  States.  Mr.  Disraeli  is  one  of  the  few  statesmen 
who  have  noticed  the  increasing  incapacity  or  lapse  of  executive  power.  The 
crown  is  a  power  without  reference  to  the  character  of  its  occupant.  It  is  said 
the  Parliament  has  become  the  sovereign,  but  the  Parliament,  in  certain  respects, 
is  not  sovereign;  it  is  destitute  of  the  power  which  should  be  vested  in  tho 
legislature,  as,  for  instance,  the  power  to  declare  war  and  conclude  peace. 


248  THE  NATION. 

The  electoral  law  was  the  form  of  the  Roman  empire 
and  of  the  German  empire  of  the  middle  age.  It  was 
the  law  of  the  church ;  and  the  popes,  as  also  the  bishops 
and  abbots  of  the  middle  age,  were  elective.  In  Venice 
the  doges  were  elective.  In  Rome  the  hereditary  law  was 
modified  by  a  form  of  adoption.1 

It  is  as  the  representation  of  persons,  that  the  republic 
is  formed  in  the  moral  determination  of  the  people.  Its 
necessary  foundation  is  in  the  virtue  of  the  people.  Mon- 
tesquieu denned  this  as  the  principle  of  the  republic.  It 
is  the  foundation  of  society  in  every  form  ;  but  it  is  the 
very  condition  of  the  order  of  the  republic. 

It  is  said  that  the  republic  is  a  monotony,  and  its  level 
a  low  and  dead  level.  The  contrast  is  then  the  formal 
gradation  of  society,  the  construction  of  lower  and  middle 
and  higher  classes.  The  greatness  which  appears  here  is 
comparative.  Its  aim  is  the  formation  of  a  conventional 
type.  But  in  the  republic  the  political  people  hold  their 
own  conscious  aim,  and  reflect  and  determine  their  own 
end.  It  is  then  a  necessity  that  the  republic  should  have 
more  of  life.  Its  life  is  always  necessarily  one  of  endeavor 
and  conflict,  or  the  government  must  lapse  into  some  other 
form.  Its  greatness  is  only  that  of  a  realized  personality. 
The  long  monotony  of  a  despotism  is  in  contrast  to  the 
ceaseless  movement  and  agitation  of  the  republic,  and  the 
latter  in  its  stability  demands  a  higher  energy,  a  more 
constant  vigilance  of  the  people.  But  the  moral  life  must 
necessarily  follow  this  law,  anjl  in  its  advance  is  always 

1  Macchiavelli  says  that  "most  of  the  lineal  successors  of  the  Roman  emperors 
turned  out  badly,  while  those  who  were  adopted  did  comparatively  well." 

Aristotle  maintains  a  partly  elective  law,  rather  than  a  strictly  hereditary  mon- 
archy. —  Politics,  bk.  ii.  ch.  8. 

Cicero  says  in  a  passage  of  singular  force,  "  Novus  ille  populus,  —  Romanus, 
—  vidit  id,  quod  fugit  Lacedemonium  Lycurgum,  qui  regem  ncn  diligendem 
duxit  sed  habendum,  qualiscunque  is  fuit,  qui  modo  esset  Herculis  stirpe  gene- 
ratus.  Nostri  illi  etiam  turn  Agrestes  viderunt,  virtutem  et  sapientiam,  regalem 
lion  progeniem  quaeri  oportere."  —  De  Republica,  bk.  ii.  ch.  12. 


THE  NATION   AND  ITS  REPRESENTATIVE   CONSTITUTION.      249 

the  more  quick,  and  the  more  unresting  and  unsatisfied, 
and  borne  into  higher  and  intenser  conflict.  This  has  its 
illustration  in  the  energy  and  devotion  and  sacrifice  which 
give  nobility  to  the  pages  of  the  history  of  nations.  This, 
says  Rothe,1  is  the  nature  of  an  holy  life,  and  that  it  is  the 
more  unresting,  and  that  as  a  consequence  there  may  be 
the  loss  of  some  apparent  material  advantage  to  the  state, 
is  not  to  become  an  argument  of  opposition  to  it. 

The  offices  and  powers  of  the  republic  constitute  a 
public  trust.  They  are  not  held  as  a  private  estate.  In 
England  the  higher  positions  are  held  as  a  private  invest- 
ment, and  in  the  army  and  navy  commissions  are  open  to 
purchase  and  sale. 

The  representation  of  the  Republic  is  of  a  person  by  a 
person.  It  is  not  of  one  person  in  substitution  for  another, 
but  in  community  with  another.  To  regard  one  person  as 
in  the  place  of  another,  would  be  the  negation  of  person- 
ality, the  representation  of  a  person  by  a  form  or  symbol. 
The  representative  violates  his  own  personality,  if  instead 
of  standing  in  his  own  free  and  conscious  self-determina- 
tion, he  aims  to  follow  a  constituency  and  to  stand  in  iden- 
tity with  that.  Then  he  is  no  longer  free  in  his  own  will 
and  knowing  his  own  mind,  and  the  result  can  be  only 
the  weakness  and  instability  of  government. 

The  representative  is  a  person,  and  is  the  representative 
of  the  moral  personality  of  the  nation,  and  therefore  in 
the  realization  of  that  acts  immediately  only  in  relation  to 
the  nation  and  to  God.  It  is  the  law  and  the  majesty  of 
the  nation,  in  its  unity  and  its  freedom,  and  as  a  govern- 
ment over  the  whole,  that  is  to  be  realized  in  his  deter- 
mination. He  is  not  the  bund  and  mechanical  instru- 
ment or  exponent  of  an  external  will,  as  a  constituency  or 
a  party,  but  stands  in  the  will  and  determination  of  the 

i  Rothe,  Theokgische  Ethik,  vol.  ii.  p.  126. 


250  THE  NATION. 

state,  which  is  not  external  to  him,  but  is  to  be  realized  in 
him;  but  every  formal  notion  of  the  nation  forbids  this, 
since  then  the  representative  has  only  a  formal  relation  to 
the  nation,  and  is  representative  only  of  separate  parties  or 
certain  persons  in  it. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE    NATION    IN   ITS  SOVEREIGNTY,  IN   RELATION   TO  OTHEB 
NATIONS. 

THE  sovereignty  of  the  nation,  is  the  manifestation  of 
power,  in  the  historical  life  of  the  world.     Its  external 
>vereignty  is  apparent  through  its  relations  to  other  na- 
ms,   and  in  its  sphere  in  history.     While   its   internal 
)vereignty  appears  in  its  government  and  order,  and  the 
sertion  of  its  will,  as  the  supreme  law  ;  in  its  external 
sovereignty  it  exists  in  its  unity  and  independence  in  re- 
lation to  other  nations. 

The  recognition  of  a  nation  becomes  thus  one  of  the 
most  impressive  events  in  history.  It  rests  on  the  con- 
sciousness, in  each  of  those  who  act  in  it,  of  its  sove- 
reignty, as  a  power  hi  history.  It  reflects  the  majesty  of 
a  power  existent  in  its  unity,  in  the  moral  order  of  the 
world.  This  recognition  of  one  nation  by  another  as  thus 
existent  with  all  the  sovereign  rights  of  a  nation,  can  never 
be  divested  of  historical  solemnity.  From  the  unformed 
life  of  men  existing  with  no  consciousness  of  political  unity 
and  order,  and  sustaining  only  some  tribal  relation,  there 
emerges  a  new  nation,  to  be  recognized  in  its  sovereignty 
by  other  nations  and  to  enter  its  course  in  history.  The 
appearing  of  a  new  planet  in  the  wide  fields  of  space,  to  be 
followed  in  all  its  circles  in  the  physical  order,  is  not  so 
impressive  as  the  appearance  of  a  nation  which  is  to  exist 
as  a  power  in  history,  and  to  act  upon  the  destiny  of  man 
in  that  grander  order,  the  order  of  a  moral  world.  From 
the  vacant  centuries  that  have  furnished  no  element  of 
unity  or  freedom  or  fraternity,  ijiere  rises  a  power  which  is 


252  THE  NATION. 

to  hold  a  conscious  moral  aim,  and  to  act  as  a  conscious 
moral  energy. 

The  sovereignty  of  the  nation  has  thus  its  immediate 
external  manifestation,  in  the  recognition  of  nations.  It 
is  the  moment  in  which  there  is  a  conscious  realization  of 
the  historical  power  of  a  people,  and  each  stands  toward 
the  other  in  a  recognized  sovereignty  in  the  world.  This 
recognition  presumes  in  the  power  which  is  recognized  the 
capacities  which  belong  in  its  necessary  being  to  a  nation, 
and  in  which  it  is  constituted  as  a  nation.  The  nation 
recognizes  in  another,  that  which  it  is  conscious  of  possess- 
ing in  itself,  in  its  own  necessary  being.  It  recognizes 
not  a  mere  association  of  men  in  a  certain  locality,  under 
a  certain  form  of  government,  but  a  people  as  a  nation. 
There  can  be  no  recognition  which  does  not  imply  this. 

This  recognition  presumes  then  respect  toward  the  na- 
tion recognized  as  a  nation.  It  must  concede  to  it  the 
rights,  which  in  its  own  necessary  existence  it  asserts  for 
itself.  There  is  the  application  here  of  the  fundamental 
law  of  rights,  — be  a  person,  and  respect  others  as  persons. 
This  law  is  implied  in  the  being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral 
person ;  it  is  the  necessary  postulate  of  rights  and  of 
duties.  From  this  then  proceeds  the  recognized  right  of  a 
nation  to  determine  its  own  political  end;  the  right  to 
establish  its  own  political  form ;  the  right  to  exclusive  leg- 
islation in  its  domain;  the  right  to  self-preservation,  to 
independence,  to  property ;  the  right  to  exist  in  a  common 
relation  to  other  nations.  In  the  existence  of  the  nation 
as  a  moral  person,  is  the  postulate  of  the  sacredness  of 
the  principle  of  non-intervention.  The  recognition  of  it, 
in  its  sovereignty,  necessarily  presumes  a  deference  for  its 
self-determination  and  its  freedom.  It  is  to  control  its  own 
order,  and  is  to  be  respected  in  this,  and  no  other  nation  is 
to  intervene  in  its  internal  administration. 

This  recognition  presumes  that  the  nation  which  is  thus 
recognized,  shall  itself  respect  the  rights  and  powers  of 


THE  NATION  IN  ITS  RELATION  TO   OTHER  NATIONS.      253 

other  nations.  There  is  the  assumption  of  the  formal 
obligations  of  a  nation.  It  is  to  yield  respect  to  others,  as 
it  asserts  its  own  self-respect.  The  principle  which  is  here 
also  the  ground  of  action,  is  the  identity  involved  in  the 
necessary  being  of  nations. 

The  recognition  of  a  nation  is  thus  a  continuous  act,  and 
so  long  as  there  is  moral  integrity  of  action,  it  is  limited 
only  by  the  formal  existence  of  the  nation  itself.  It  is  not 
therefore  to  be  momentarily  offered,  nor  to  be  arbitrarily 
withdrawn.  It  is  the  expression  of  the  continuous  relation 
of  nations  in  their  existence  in  history,  and  proceeds  from 
the  postulate  of  continuity  in  the  nation. 

While  the  recognition  of  one  nation  by  another  nation 
is  one  of  the  highest  acts  of  external  sovereignty,  the  right 
to  recognition  is  a  formal  right  and  the  demand  for  recog- 
nition can  be  only  formal.  A  people  may  exist  with  a 
manifest  unity  and  sovereignty,  and  with  entire  independ- 
ence and  freedom,  and  be  in  reality  a  nation,  although  it 
receive  no  recognition  from  other  nations.  Whether  it 
be  in  reality  a  nation,  is  to  be  determined  only  by  its  con- 
tent, that  is,  the  internal  sovereignty  which  is  manifest  in 
law  and  freedom,  and  the  external  sovereignty  which  is 
manifest  in  independence  and  self-subsistence,  but  its  rec- 
ognition depends  only  upon  the  determination,  in  the  judg- 
ment of  another,  whether  it  be  a  nation. 

This  recognition  of  a  nation  is  not  simply  the  recognition 
of  a  certain  succession  in  government,  although  it  is  neces- 
sarily through  a  government.  It  is  the  recognition  of  the 
nation,  which  in  its  sovereignty  may  determine  its  own 
government.  The  act  is  through  the  government  which 
the  nation  ordains  for  itself,  and  the  government  thus  con- 
stituted, whatever  its  form,  is  alone  legitimate.  It  does 
not  follow,  therefore,  in  any  event,  after  the  recognition  of 
a  nation,  that  communication  is  to  be  opened  with  some 
transient  power  which,  perhaps  through  the  aid  of  a  for- 
eign imperialism,  may  Be  imposed  upon  a  people  from 
without. 


254  THE  NATION. 

The  sovereignty  of  the  nation  in  its  external  relations  is 
indicative  of  the  place  and  vocation  of  the  nation  in  his- 
tory. It  is  manifest  through  it  as  an  integral  power  in 
the  moral  order,  which  is  history.  This  is  the  premise  of 
normal  international  relations,  and  the  system  of  interna- 
tional laws.  Since  the  nation  has  its  vocation  in  a  moral 
order,  and  its  end  in  the  realization  of  the  destination  of 
humanity  in  history,  the  nations  exist  in  an  international 
relation,  which  has  for  its  condition  a  moral  relation,  and 
the  system  of  international  laws  is  definitive  of  the  moral 
order  in  which  these  relations  come  forth.  The  nations, 
in  the  attainment  of  their  necessary  end,  are  constituted  in 
a  moral  order.  They  cannot  therefore,  in  the  development 
of  national  life,  remain  in  isolation  and  indifference.  While 
a  collection  of  men  has  no  consciousness  of  national  life, 
it  does  not  and  cannot  concern  itself  with  other  peoples 
which  exist  as  nations,  except  as  some  fragmentary  mass 
is  concerned  in  the  pursuance  of  some  private  interest ;  but 
if  there  be  the  development  of  national  life  it  is  brought 
into  a  relation  to  other  nations.  The  formal  definition  of 
these  relations  is  the  office  of  international  law.  As  these 
relations  consist  in  the  moral  order  of  history,  their  am- 
pler expression  will  come  in  the  higher  realization  of  the 
being  of  the  nation  in  the  moral  order  of  history.  But  the 
merely  formal  character  which  the  science  of  international 
law  has  in  the  work  of  its  yet  greatest  master,  bears  the 
impress  of  his  whole  political  conception,  and  of  the  formal 
political  tendencies  of  his  age.1 

The  science  of  international  law  has  its  foundation  in  the 
being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  person ;  this  is  the  condi- 

1  "  Grotius  was  not  a  generative  thinker.  If  the  difficult  problems  of  the  duties 
which  one  nation  owes  to  another  had  been  discussed  in  a  Baconian  spirit  for 
the  purpose  of  ascertaining  what  those  laws  are  which  bind  voluntary  agents  — 
if  it  had  been  shown  historically  how  these  laws,  though  they  may  be  broken  by 
men  with  arms  in  their  hands,  nevertheless  avenge  themselves,  something  would 
have  been  gained.  But  mere  maxims  which  define  accurately  and  peremptorily 
what  should  and  what  should  not  be  done,  must  be  rather  hindrances  than  helps 


THE  NATION  IN  ITS  EELATION  TO   OTHER  NATIONS.      255 

tion  of  the  rights  and  obligations  which  it  is  to  embrace 
and  define.  And  as  the  nation  advances  in  the  realiza- 
tion of  its  being,  the  science  which  has  for  its  province  the 
definition  of  the  law  of  international  relations  will  be- 
come constantly  the  expression  of  a  development  in  wider 
and  more  varied  relations.  It  is  regulative  of  relations 
deeper  than  those  formed  simply  in  the  adjustment  of  con- 
troversies arising  among  nations  out  of  a  state  of  war,  or 
those  which  are  the  dictate  of  a  mere  international  cour- 
tesy, although  the  principle  of  rights  presumes  this  cour- 
tesy. It  is  this  conception  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  being, 
which  has  given  to  the  work  of  Wheaton  an  almost  his- 
torical position ;  and  however  briefly  defined,  its  clear  ap- 
prehension of  it  has  been  the  source  of  an  influence  which 
can  attach  to  no  mere  manual  of  rules  or  collection  of  pre- 
cedents, in  a  science  which  has  no  acknowledged  tribunal. 
Wheaton  says,  "every  state  has  certain  sovereign  rights 
to  which  it  is  entitled  as  a  moral  being ;  in  other  words, 
because  it  is  a  state ;  "  and  again,  "every  state  as  a  distinct 
moral  being,  independent  of  every  other,  may  freely  exer- 
cise all  its  sovereign  rights  in  any  manner  not  inconsistent 
with  the  equal  rights  of  other  states ; "  and  again,  "  all 
sovereign  states  are  equal  in  the  eye  of  international  law, 
whatever  may  be  their  relative  power."  These  proposi- 
tions are  constructive  in  the  work  of  Wheaton.1 

The  progress  in  international  law  can  come  only  in  the 
clearer  apprehension  of  the  being  of  the  nation,  and  the 

to  an  actual  moral  science.  Yet  the  value  of  the  work,"  the  writer  adds,  "is  in 
its  evidence  that  these  relations  have  some  moral  ground;  that  they  cannot  be 
left  to  be  determined  by  accident,  nor  commercial  cupidity,  nor  a  Macchiavellian 
policy."  —Maurice,  History  of  Philosophy,  vol.  iv.  p.  324. 

1  Wheaton,  International  Law.    Dana's  ed.  pp.  52,  89, 100. 

R.  von  Mohl  has  criticized  the  work  of  Wheaton  as  unscientific,  a  confusion 
or  miscellany  of  law,  contemporary  politics,  and  history;  but  whatever  may  be 
its  defect  of  method, —  and  that  certainly  is  obvious  enough,  —  its  moral  spirit 
and  conception  has  given  it  an  historical  influence  and  position  beyond  almost 
any  modern  work  on  the  subject.  —  Literatettr  wid  Geschichte  der  Staatsimsen- 
Khaften,  vol.  i.  p.  399. 


THE  NATION. 

consequent  assertion  of  the  rights  and  correspondent  duties 
involved  in  that.  It  will  await  the  institution  of  no  tri- 
bunal, whose  formal  judgment  will  be  a  finality.  In  the 
nature  of  the  nation  in  history,  there  can  be  no  tribunal 
and  no  congress  which  shall  be  in  itself  supreme,  and 
possess  over  the  course  of  nations  an  ultimate  and  impera- 
tive control.  As  the  nation  is  constituted  as  a  moral  per- 
son, it  cannot  abdicate  its  responsibility  which  is  given  in 
its  being,  and  can,  in  its  ultimate  determination,  be  re- 
sponsible to  none  on  earth,  but  only  and  immediately  to 
God. 

The  nation  will  hold  in  its  own  determination,  so  long 
as  it  exists  in  the  conditions  of  history,  the  issues  of  war, 
on  which  it  enters  in  its  entire  being.  It  may  act  in  cer- 
tain circumstances  through  another,  and  it  may  refer  the 
exposition  of  certain  principles,  or  the  estimate  in  the  ad- 
justment of  certain  concerns,  to  the  judgment  of  another ; 
but  in  this  it  may  not  act  so  as  to  impair  its  sovereignty, 
or  to  surrender  its.  moral  responsibility. 

In  the  realization  of  the  being  of  the  nation  in  history, 
there  will  be  manifest  among  nations  a  deeper  relationship. 
In  their  greater  strength,  and  as  their  end  is  apprehended 
in  the  realization  of  the  destination  of  humanity,  there 
will  come  a  more  enduring  peace.  The  advance  of  hu- 
manity is  indeed  slow ;  but  in  the  solidarity  of  nations  they 
will  discern  the  sources  and  conditions  of  their  aid  to  each 
other,  and  that  all  must  suffer  in  the  detriment  of  each. 
Then  will  come  the  sympathy  and  the  helpfulness,  which 
there  is  among  men,  who  march  toward  the  same  goal, 
and  at  last  must  march  all  together  if  at  all.  It  is  there- 
fore no  dream,  but  the  coming  of  a  new  life,  which  holds 
the  prophecy  and  the  realization  of  the  fraternity  of  na- 
tions. In  the  development  of  history  this  relation  is  be- 
coming more  perfectly  apprehended,  and  as  mankind  rec- 
ognizes more  deeply  the  universal  fatherhood,  there  is 


THE  NATION  IN  ITS  RELATION  TO    OTHER  NATIONS.        257 

manifested  in  the    Christendom  of  nations   the  family  of 
nations.1 

1  Napoleon  III.  pronounced  the  award  in  the  Universal  Exposition, "  in  the 
name  of  the  family  of  nations."  Thiers  and  Guizot  have  shown  the  course 
which  would  have  represented  the  selfishness  of  France;  but  the  idea  of  the 
fraternity  of  nations  has  always  awakened  in  the  spirit  of  modern  France  an 
emotion,  and  has  stirred  it  with  hopes  beyond  any  appeal  to  selfish  interests. 

The  tendency  of  modern  diplomacy  is,  to  become  more  open,  and  the  old  de- 
vices and  disguisements  of  merely  sinister  schemes  and  tortuous  courses  con- 
stantly avail  less.  But  there  is  no  estimate  of  the  danger  and  disaster  involved 
in  the  weakness  and  cowardice  of  nations,  in  not  meeting  as  men." 

The  premise  of  international  rights  is  given  in  the  postulate  of  HefFter,  as  cited 
by  Wheaton:  "  Law  in  general,  is  the  external  freedom  of  the  moral  person. 
This  law  may  be  sanctioned  or  guaranteed,  or  may  derive  its  force  from  self-pres- 
ervation." —  "  The  jus  gentium  is  formed  on  reciprocity  of  will." 

The  refusal  of  England  to  submit  her  action  in  recognizing  the  Confederates 
In  rebellion  as  belligerents,  to  arbitration,  proceeds  upon  the  ground  that  it  was 
an  act  of  England  in  her  sovereignty,  and  may  in  itself  be  referred  to  no  arbi- 
tration; but  it  was  a  deliberate  act,  within  her  control,  and  the  injuries  to  this 
nation  which  were  resultant  from  it  are  therefore  within  her  responsibility,  and 
may  be  submitted  to  an  arbitration. 

Their  recognition  as  a  belligerent  power,  by  a  nation,  before  the  circum- 
stance of  war  involved  any  necessity  for  it,  tended  necessarih'  to  elevate  them  to 
an  equality  with  the  nation,  and  gave  them  all  the  advantages  which  arise  from 
regulations  shaped  to  apply  to  nations,  in  defining  national  rights  in  time  of 
war  This  was  the  constant  security  of  the  Alabama  in  British  ports.  The 
neutrality  of  England  in  the  circumstance  of  war  became  nominal. 

Mr.  Gladstone  attributes  many  of  the  recent  difficulties  of  England  to  her 
recognition  of  any  power  as  a  nation,  when  a  transient  interest  may  dictate. 
There  was  more  than  this  in  the  eager  manifestation  of  satisfaction  at  the  peril 
approaching  the  American  people.  It  would  seem  to  have  been  a  sudden  dis- 
closure of  the  spirit  of  the  English  toward  the  United  States.  If  the  disclosure 
was  terrible,  it  would  be  weakness  to  forget  it  and  peril  to  overlook  it. 

Mr.  Gladstone,  who  seems  never  to  have  heard  the  Hebrew  national  psalms 
said  or  sung,  said,  as  a  minister  of  state,  that  "  Jefferson  Davis  had  made  the 
South  a  nation,"  and  the  remark  is  mainly  significant  as  indicating  among  the 
statesmen  of  England  the  conception  of  what  constitutes  a  nation.  The  sym- 
pathies of  nations  are  more  subtle  and  profound  than  are  those  of  individuals, 
and  the  causes  of  the  sympathy  of  Prussia  and  Russia  and  Italy  for  America, 
and  the  active  sympathy  of  England  for  the  rebellion,  lie  deep  in  the  springs  of 
history. 

The  strength  of  the  political  course  which  Mr.  Burlingame  has  inaugurated  in 
the  East,  is  that  it  does  not  regard  these  peoples  merely  as  those  with  whom  we 
are  to  open  economic  relations,  —  a  policy  in  the  interests  of  the  sovereignty  and 
of  the  freedom  of  trade,  nor  to  begin  a  scheme  of  conquest  in  which  all  the 
elements  of  national  life  in  the  people,  however  imperfect,  are  to  be  crushed; 
but  it  is  the  institution  of  a  policy  in  which  these  elements,  in  the  unity  and 
spirit  of  the  people,  are  developed,  and  is  the  investiture  of  them  with  powers  and 
rights  which  have  a  moral  content,  and  consist  with  international  law. 
17 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE   NATION    AND    THE    INDIVIDUAL. 

THE  tendency  of  the  political  speculation  of  the  old 
world,  in  Greek  and  Roman  thought,  was  to  regard  the 
state  as  above  and  before  the  individual,  so  that  the  ex- 
istence of  the  latter  was  subordinate  and  secondary ;  — 
the  individual  existed  only  for  the  state,  and  the  state  alone 
existed  as  an  end  in  itself.  There  was  the  assumption  of 
a  necessary  contradiction,  and  the  solution  was  in  the  nega- 
tion of  the  individual.  In  Greece,  the  state  acknowl- 
edged no  moral,  and  allowed  no  formal  limitation  to  its 
power.  It  took  upon  itself  the  immediate  and  exclusive 
conduct  of  life.  It  was  to  dispose  of  all,  and  not  only  to 
prescribe  the  avocations  and  regulate  the  affairs,  but  to 
direct  even  the  thoughts  and  affections  of  men.  It  com- 
pelled the  individual  to  engage  in  public  pursuits  and  fill 
public  offices  and  execute  public  trusts  in  the  same  manner 
as  if  subject  to  a  military  discipline. 

In  contrast  with  this,  the  tendency  of  modern  political 
speculation,  in  its  abstract  systems,  has  been  to  regard  the 
individual  as  above  and  before  the  state,  so  that  the  ex- 
istence of  the  latter  is  subordinate  and  secondary  ;  —  the 
state  exists  for  the  individual,  and  the  individual  alone 
exists  as  an  end  in  himself.  In  these  conventional  schemes, 
the  state  is  apprehended  as  only  the  form  which  the  indi- 
vidual adopts  in  the  pursuance  of  his  private  ends ;  it  is 
an  artificial  and  temporary  association,  formed  by  a  collec- 
tion of  certain  individuals  ;  it  is  established  and  maintained 
by  a  certain  number  of  men,  as  private  persons,  and  is 
subservient  to  their  interests  as  individual  or  collective. 


THE  NATION  AND   THE  INDIVIDUAL.  259 

It  is  secondary  to  the  individual  in  the  assumption  that 
it  is  only  an  artificial  and  temporary  organization,  and  in 
the  rejection  of  the  unity  and  continuity  involved  in  its 
necessary  conception,  and  manifested  in  its  organic  life. 

In  the  course  of  history,  there  has  been  through  the 
Christian  centuries,  in  the  realization  of  the  being  of  the 
nation  and  the  individual,  the  evolution  of  no  antagonism, 
but  there  has  been  the  manifestation  of  their  necessary 
foundation  and  unity. 

Firstly,  The  nation  and  the  individual  are  existent  in 
the  conditions  of  history,  each  as  a  necessary  and  integral 
element,  in  the  normal  development  of  the  other.  The 
nation  is  no  abstraction.  It  is  not  a  formal  and  external 
order  apart  from  the  people.  It  is  organic,  and  in  its 
necessary  process  as  a  moral  organism  it  presumes  in  the 
individual  the  realization  of  freedom.  In  this,  it  is  consti- 
tuted in  its  freedom.  There  is  in  this,  instead  of  a  source  of 
variance,  the  postulate  of  its  moral  strength  and  its  spirit. 

The  individual,  conversely,  has  his  normal  development 
in  the  nation ;  it  is  formed  in  the  institution  of  a  moral 
order.  This  has  been  the  course  of  history.  The  transi- 
tion from  the  unformed  life  of  man,  the  barbarous  con- 
dition, has  been  in  the  realization  of  the  truly  human, 
that  is,  the  normal  and  the  moral  condition,  and  this  has  been 
formed  in  the  relations  of  the  nation.  The  isolation  of  man 
is  the  representation,  not  only  of  an  unreal,  but  an  un- 
developed existence,  and  the  institution  of  the  normal  rela- 
tions of  men,  that  is,  the  organization  of  society,  is  in  the 
nation.  There  has  been  thus  for  the  individual  apart  from 
the  nation,  no  realized  freedom.  The  nation  has  been 
the  precedent  of  the  realization  of  freedom. 

Secondly,  The  nation  and  the  individual  in  their  rela- 
tion, exist  each  in  a  real  and  integral  moral  life  and  each 
as  an  end.  The  necessary  conception  of  personality  for- 
bids that  it  should  exist  only  as  a  means  to  an  end,  and 
its  realization  in  the  nation  and.in  the  individual  forbids 


260  THE  NATION. 


that  either  should  be  apprehended  as  merely  secondary 
and  subordinate.  The  nation,  as  a  moral  personality,  has 
its  law  of  being  in  itself,  and  its  own  vocation  and  its  own 
end  in  history ;  the  individual  in  his  own  personality  has 
therein  also  his  own  law  of  being,  and  his  own  vocation 
and  end.1 

The  personality  of  the  individual  has  not  its  origin  nor 
its  foundation  in  the  nation ;  the  personality  of  the  nation 
has  not  its  origin  nor  its  foundation  in  the  individual,  but 
each  has  its  origin  and  foundation  immediately  in  God, 
and  its  vocation  is  only  from  Him.  There  is  therefore  no 
necessary  antagonism,  but  in  the  law  of  their  being  an 
inner  unity.  There  can  be,  therefore,  in  their  normal  de- 
velopment no  real  conflict,  and  there  can  be  no  apparent 
or  external  conflict  which  does  not  involve  in  the  one  or 
the  other  the  precedent  contradiction  of  its  own  nature, 
and  of  the  law  of  its  own  action,  as  determined  in  per- 
sonality. The  actual  conflict  of  either  with  the  other,  is  in 
its  precedent  a  conflict  with  itself.  That  there  should  be 
the  possibility  of  an  apparent  or  an  external  conflict,  lies  in 
the  fact  that  through  the  power  of  sin,  and  through  the 
ignorance  and  the  weakness  of  men,  the  course  of  each  is 
agitated  and  disturbed,  and  the  realization  of  its  being  must 
be  through  many  crises ;  and  in  the  fact  also  that^the  exist* 
ence  of  each  in  itself  is  a  development  in  the  moral  con- 
ditions of  history  and  of  life ;  but  in  the  realization  of  the 
being  of  each,  the  possibility  of  this  antagonism  is  dimin- 
ished, elements  of  external  opposition  are  eliminated,  and 
all  that  separates  or  occasions  variance  is  being  constantly 
excluded  in  the  course  of  the  development  itself. 

1  There  is  the  representation  of  the  individual  personality  in  the  conscious- 
ness,  in  the  dramatist:  — 

."I  am  a  nobler  substance  than  the  stars: 
Or  are  they  better  because  they  are  bigger? 
I  have  a  will  and  faculties  of  choice,  and  power 
To  do  or  not  to  do ;  and-  reason  why 
I  do  or  not  do  this ;  the  stars  have  none. 
They  know  not  why  they  shine  more  than  this  taper, 
Nor  how  they  work,  nor  what?  " 


THE  NATION   AND   THE  INDIVIDUAL.  261 

The  organism  of  society  is  thus  construed  as  an  ethical 
organism,  that  is,  an  organic  whole  in  which  that  which 
exists  in  it  is  both  a  part  and  a  whole,  —  a  part  in  rela- 
tion to  an  existing  whole,  and  yet  each  a  whole  in  itself.1 
In  the  Greek  representation,  Aristotle  justly  places  the 
nation  in  relation  to  the  individual  as  the  whole  to  the 
parts,  and  this  relation  exists  for  each  individual  compre- 
hended in  it ;  but  the  defect  in  the  Greek  thought  is  in  not 
regarding  the  individual  as  a  whole  and  an  end  in  him- 
self, and  also  in  apprehending  him  as  immediately  related 
only  to  the  state,  and  therefore  as  secondary  and  subordi- 
nate. This  was  the  fault  of  the  Greek  thought ;  it  had  not 
the  revelation  of  the  divine  origin  of  man  in  the  image  of 
God,  which  has  been  from  the  beginning  of  history  the 
ground  of  the  positive  Christian  development. 

Thirdly,  The  nation  is  withdrawn  from  the  individual 
by  a  vocation,  and  the  individual  is  withdrawn  from  the 
nation  by  a  vocation ;  but  this  instead  of  being  the  premise 
of  an  inconsistence,  because  the  fulfillment  of  the  relation 
of  each  is  in  the  realization  of  personality,  and  in  the  will 
of  God  from  whom  it  proceeds,  is  the  condition  of  an  inner 
and  a  necessary  unity,  as  this  unity  has  its  subsistence  in 
God.  There  is  in  this  apprehension  of  the  moral  order 
existent  in  the  vocation  of  the  nation  and  the  individual, 
the  presentation  of  no  abstract  ideal,  but  it  is  the  very 
ground  of  the  unity  and  progress  and  solidarity  of  society. 

The  nation  has  its  own  vocation  which  it  is  to  appre- 
hend and  to  realize  in  history ;  it  has  not  its  origin  in  the 
volition  of  the  individual,  nor  its  end  in  the  object  of  the 

1  "  The  nation  must  apprehend  its  moral  aim  not  exclusively  as  the  universal 
but  as  this  in  inseparable  unity  with  the  individual.  Every  individual  must  be 
an  absolute  end  also  to  the  state.  The  individuality  of  none  can  be  engrossed 
by  society  as  an  whole  to  perish  in  it,  as  if  crushed  through  the  grinding  of  the 
wheels  of  the  state  machine,  for  the  sake  of  the  common  good."  —  Rothe,  The- 
vkgische  Ethilc,  vol.  iii.  sec.  2,  p.  903. 

"  It  has  often  been  said  that  the  well-being  of  its  citizens  is  the  end  of  the 
rtate  ;  this  is  certainly  true  :  if  it  is  not  well  with  them,  if  their  subjective  aim 
i  *  not  satisfied,  if  the  state  as  such  is  not  the  means  for  this  satisfaction,  then 
i  fce  state  stands  on  lame  legs."  — Hegel,  Philosophic  des  Recht*,  p.  321. 


262  THE  NATION. 

individual,  since  as  a  moral  person,  it  has  its  origin  in 
the  divine  will,  and  its  end  in  the  moral  order  which  is  set 
before  it.  There  is  thus  manifest  in  its  progress,  a  pur- 
pose in  which  it  is  borne  toward  the  divine  end  in  history. 
There  is  an  aim  which  in  its  completeness  in  history, 
transcends  necessarily  the  existence  of  the  individual. 
There  is  a  continuous  spirit  which  is  apparent  in  the  suc- 
ceeding moments  of  its  existence,  and  these  are  not  merely 
the  changes  in  a  physical  sequence,  but  in  the  develop- 
ment of  a  moral  being. 

The  individual  is  to  work  in  his  own  vocation,  and  this 
consists  with  a  moral  order.  This  vocation,  in  its  external 
phases,  is  incident  to  the  realization  of  personality.  The 
nation  cannot  determine  the  vocation  of  the  individual, 
though  in  its  moral  order  it  is  to  maintain  its  sphere.  It 
can  assume  nothing  which  devolves  upon  the  determina- 
tion of  the  individual,  but  while  existent  with  it  in  the 
relations  of  personality,  it  is  external  to  it.  The  individual 
cannot  transfer  to  the  nation  that  which  is  involved  in  his 
vocation.  Since  it  is  in  the  realization  of  personality, 
there  can  be  no  transferal  of  it,  but  the  individual  is  to 
work  in  it,  and  to  work  it  out.  The  individual  has  neces- 
sarily to  work  in  his  own  purpose,  and  after  the  idea  given 
in  the  type  of  his  own  individuality.  He  can  only  appre- 
hend that  which  is  his  own,  and  an  end  which  was  alien  to 
his  being  would  be  for  him  an  abstraction,  or  would  have 
necessarily  to  be  rejected  as  an  evil.  It  is  thus  alone, 
in  conformance  to  his  vocation,  that  he  can  work  with  a 
conscious  spirit  and  freedom. 

Personality  is  inalienable.  The  rights  of  the  spirit  alone 
are  inalienable  rights.  They  are  the  rights  of  the  spirit 
in  itself,  and  are  not  as  those  which  can  be  instituted 
through  positive  law  in  the  external  sphere.  They  are 
rights  which  are  not  won  by  force  of  arms.  They  are 
not  to  be  numbered  in  the  conquests  of  earth.  The  inner 
spirit  is  beyond  the  assault  of  force ;  its  life  is  not  touched, 


THE  NATION  AND   THE  INDIVIDUAL.  263 

and  its  strength  does  not  yield  to  mortal  wounds.  A 
man  may  alienate  an  outward  thing,  but  personality  he 
cannot  alienate.  Its  alienation  would  presume  its  nega- 
tion, the  very  abdication  of  the  will.  The  surrender  thus 
of  the  individual  will  and  the  conscience  to  that  which 
is  external,  as  to  a  priest,  and  the  faith  which  calls  one  on 
earth  a  master,  is  the  degradation  of  personality,  and  its 
consequence  is  superstition  and  slavery.1  Since  person- 
ality has  its  origin  in  God,  its  spiritual  and  inner  life  is 
immediately  with  God.  Its  course  is  in  the  light  in  which 
no  shadow  falls,  as  it  is  unmeasured  by  time  ;  it  is  the  path 
which  the  vulture's  eye  has  not  traced,  and  is  as  "  the 
flight  of  one  alone  to  the  Only  One."  "  Over  the  soul,'" 
says  Luther,  "  God  can  and  will  allow  no  one  to  rule  but 
himself."  The  authority  of  the  state  cannot  control  the 
inner  life,  it  can  judge  none  for  opinion's  sake,  it  can  by 
no  enactment  direct  the  course  of  the  spirit ;  it  is  not  to 
invade  the  conscience  and  thought,  it  is  not  to  regulate  the 
dispositions  of  men  ;  it  cannot  determine  their  love  or 
hate  or  thoughts.  These  are  withdrawn  from  the  state, 
and  over  them  the  state  neither  has  the  power,  nor  is  it 
called  upon  to  rule.  As  the  freedom  of  the  inner  spirit 
is  beyond  external  power,  the  rights  of  the  spirit  cannot 
therefore  embody  themselves  in  the  formal  sphere  of  posi- 
tive rights,  but  the  nation  is  to  guard  them  from  all  attempt 
at  invasion  from  the  external  sphere,  and  to  forbid  every 
attempt  to  bring  force  to  bear  upon  them,  and  is  to  secure 
and  maintain  the  freedom  of  conscience  and  of  thought, 
the  freedom  of  worship  and  of  science. 

Fourthly,  The  nation  and  the  individual  exist  in  an 
organic  and  moral  relation,  in  which  the  normal  develop- 
ment of  each  has  as  its  condition  the  development  of  the 
other,  and  their  unity  is  formed  after  the  law  of  a  moral 
unity.  The  development  of  the  individual  has  instead  of 

1  Hegel  speaks  of  personality  as  "  die  hochste  zugescharfste  spitze."  —  Logik, 
bk.  iii.  p.  349.  Rothe  says,  "  Personlichkeit  i|t  die  rechste,  concreteste,  und  in- 
tensiviste  Bestimmtheit."  —  Theologische  Ethik,  vol.  i.  p.  66. 


264 


THE  NATION. 


its  restriction,  its  necessary  condition  in  the  nation.  It 
has  its  postulate  in  no  merely  external  order,  and  no  for- 
mal complex  of  laws  and  systems,  but  there  is  in  these 
its  limitation.  As  it  is  formed  in  relations,  it  subsists 
in  a  relation  to  the  nation,  as  a  moral  person.  The  life 
that  proceeds  in  conformance  only  to  an  external  and 
formal  postulate  —  the  life  that  in  morals  is  under  rules, 
and  in  art  under  manners,  and  in  religion  under  dogmas, 
and  in  politics  under  systems  —  is  devoid  of  energy  and  of 
the  strength  and  satisfaction  of  a  living  spirit.  It  is  be- 
cause the  nation  is  not  merely  an  external  and  formal 
sequence  or  system,  but  an  organic  and  a  moral  person, 
that  it  consists  with  the  development  of  the  individual 
person. 

The  nation  indeed  exists  in  its  freedom  in  the  realiza- 
tion of  a  moral  order,  but  that  order  is  correspondent  with 
the  real,  the  innermost  being  of  the  individual  personality, 
and  therefore  the  individual  may  strive  to  embody  his 
moral  determination  in  it,  and  may  have  in  it  the  satisfac- 
tion of  his  aim.  But  it  is  in  consistence  with  this  that 
the  nation  may  always  require  from  the  individual,  in  the 
external  sphere,  an  external  moral  life,  and  the  individual 
may  demand  from  the  state  that  no  law  determining  the 
external  sphere  shall  be  in  itself  immoral,  or  destructive 
of  the  rectitude,  or  conviction  of  right  of  the  individual, 
or  impose  obligations  which  are  an  offense  to  conscience.1 

1  The  conscience  is  not  simply  a  certain  faculty,  as  the  memory  and  the  judg- 
ment, to  be  occupied  with  the  perception  and  contemplation  of  good  and  evil, 
as  the  memory,  for  instance,  is  occupied  with  the  recollection  of  the  past,  or  the 
judgment  with  the  comparison  of  objects.  It  is  not  simply  the  capacity  for 
the  wider  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  and  the  higher,  —  the  better  conscience 
is  not  the  wider  acquisition  of  knowledge  of  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  good  and 
evil,  and  the  discernment  of  the  quality  of  its  fruitage.  This  can  account 
for  none  of  the  facts  of  conscience,  as  the}'  are  attested  in  the  consciousness  of 
the  individual;  or  in  the  writings  for  instance  of  Shakespeare  and  the  older 
dramatists,  in  whom  there  is  the  most  profound  analysis  of  these  facts ;  or  in 
the  history  of  the  race ;  or  in  the  witness  of  its  great  moral  teachers.  There 
is  in  the  realization  of  personality  the  conquest  of  evil  and  the  separation  from 
it.  The  conscience  presumes  the  communion  of  a  person  with  a  person  ;  it 
is  represented  thus  as  the  inner  voice,  the  eternal  word  which  speaks  to  the 
spirit  of  man. 


THE  NATION  AND   THE  INDIVIDUAL.  265 

It  is  a  duty  to  obey,  but  if  the  law  to  which  obedience  is 
enjoined  is  in  violation  of  the  law  of  conscience,  its  rejection 
is  a  moral  necessity.  The  individual  may  not  in  his  ac- 
tion controvert  his  own.  conscience,  as  if  for  instance  the 
state  demanded  his  participation  in  some  superstitious  rite. 
But  the  state  in  every  law  and  regulation  of  this  sort,  not 
only  passes  beyond  its  province,  but  the  requisition  of  such 
acts  is  in  violation  of  the  law  of  its  own  being,  as  there  can 
be  no  actual  conflict  of  the  individual  and  the  nation  but 
it  is  preceded  by,  and  in  itself  involves,  the  variance  of 
the  one  or  the  other  with  the  law  of  its  being.  The  re- 
jection of  an  immoral  requisition  may  be  therefore  the  con- 
formance  to  the  higher  law,  the  law  of  the  being  of  the 
nation,  but  the  rejection  can  only  be  justified  in  the  indi- 
vidual, when  it  is  followed  by  an  eifort  and  endeavor  to 
repeal  the  law  or  regulation  itself. 

The  development  of  either  the  individual  or  the  nation 
is  in  so  far  the  condition  of  the  higher  development  of  the 
other,  that  the  ages  of  their  higher  historical  development 
have  been  coincident.  They  become  associated  in  the 
spirit  of  the  people.  In  the  life  of  the  nation,  the  very 
names  of  its  members,  in  whom  there  has  been  the  higher 
personality,  become  the  synonym  of  its  strength.  Thus 
Dante  becomes  identified  with  Italy,  and  his  name  becomes 
a  sign  of  its  national  hope  ;  and  Shakespeare  with  England, 
and  Luther  with  Germany ;  and  in  the  struggles  of  the 
peoples  for  national  life,  their  names  become  the  symbols 
of  national  unity  and  national  spirit. 

It  is  thus,  also,  that  in  the  decay  of  the  nation  there  is 
the  correspondent  degradation  of  the  individual.  This  has 
its  historical  evidence  in  many  forms.  As  the  strength  of 
the  organic  life  of  the  nation  is  impaired,  and  its  spirit  is 

There  is  in  the  conception  of  personality,  the  significance  in  ethics  of  the 
golden  rule,  as  a  comprehensive  law,  —  "  do  unto  others  as  ye  would  that  they 
should  do  unto  you."  This  alone  removes  it  from  a  mere  negation ;  the  law  of 
action  is  in  no  abstract  idea  of  justice,  nor  in  love  of  itself  considered,  but  the 
content  of  the  law  is  in  personality. 


266  THE  NATION. 

broken,  there  is  an  increase  in  the  assumption  and  dom- 
ination of  sects  and  parties,  and  the  individual  person- 
ality is  weakened  as  the  people  become  entangled  and 
trammeled  and  ridden  by  them.  The  tyranny  of  opinion 
is  stronger  in  the  decadence  of  law  and  freedom.  The 
moral  energy  and  vigor  of  the  people  is  sapped.  The 
armies  are  no  longer  armies  of  men,  but  masses  moving 
mechanically,  as  if  impelled  by  some  power  external  to 
themselves.  They  become  converted  into  the  passive 
instruments  of  an  imperial  force. 

It  is  in  the  law  of  a  moral  unity  —  the  unity  in  which 
the  realization  of  personality  subsists  —  that  the  foundation 
of  the  unity  and  continuity  of  the  nation  is  laid.  It  is  the 
law  which  has  its  highest  manifestation  in  sacrifice.  It 
consists  with  the  consciousness  of  the  vocation  of  the 
nation,  as  the  fulfillment  of  humanity  in  God.  A  his- 
torian of  the  state,  as  he  presents,  in  the  exclusion  of  all 
theories,  the  facts  of  history,  says,1  "  The  glory  and  honor 
of  the  nation  have  always  elevated  the  hearts  of  its  chil- 
dren, and  inspired  them  with  sacrifice.  For  the  being, 
the  freedom,  and  the  rights  of  the  nation,  the  noblest  and 
the  worthiest  have  always  offered  their  lives  and  their  all. 
The  whole  great  thought  of  the  Fatherland,  and  the  love 
of  its  children  to  it,  would  be  inconceivable,  if  this  moral 
personality  did  not  belong  to  the  nation." 

But  as  there  is  in  the  moral  unity  which  is  manifest  in 
sacrifice,  the  recognition  of  the  moral  being  of  the  nation, 
there  is  in  it  also,  the  preclusion  of  the  postulate  and  induc- 
tion of  individualism.  It  can  find  no  reconciliation  with 
the  assumption  that  the  nation  exists  only  for  the  institu- 
tion and  protection  of  private  interests,  and  the  further- 
ance of  private  ends.  The  unity  which  subsists  with  the 
sacrifice  of  the  individual  for  the  nation,  as  it  is  formed  in 
the  manifestation  of  the  law  of  the  highest  moral  unity  in 
the  life  of  humanity,  can  proceed  only  in  the  conception  of 

1  Bluntschli's  Allgemeims  Statsrechts,  vol.  i.  p.  40. 


THE  NATION  AND   THE  INDIVIDUAL.  267 

the  being  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  person.  It  cannot 
consist  with  a  mere  individualism  in  its  principle  or  result; 
and  it  is  abhorrent  that  the  sacrifice  of  those  who  had  the 
higher  moral  spirit  —  the  worthier  going  forth  in  their 
prime  with  joy  and  trust  —  should  be  counted  only  to 
serve  the  private  and  special  ends  of  the  individual,  and 
to  secure  or  promote  their  pleasure  or  possession ;  and 
when  the  names  and  sacrifice  of  these  are  kept  in  the 
memory  of  the  people,  it  is  abhorrent  that  any  should 
regard  the  nation  as  existent  only  to  subserve  their  private 
and  special  interests  and  ends.  But  this  is  the  necessary- 
assumption  of  individualism. 

It  is  because  there  is  an  inner  moral  unity  in  the  nation 
that  the  higher  realization  of  personality  consists  with  it. 
The  ideal  state  of  Plato  regarded  the  freedom  and  person- 
ality of  the  individual  with  dread,  and  found  no  place  for 
it ;  but  in  the  realization  of  the  nation  it  becomes  the 
element  of  its  strength.  It  is  as  the  temple  whose  build- 
ing is  of  living  stones.  The  very  substance  of  the  nation 
is  in  identity  with  the  realization  of  personality ;  but  this 
can  be  conceived  only  as  the  nation  is  a  moral  person.  It 
is  thus  in  its  history,  that  those  in  whom  there  is  the 
higher  realization  of  personality  testify  in  themselves  tc 
the  higher  realization  of  the  nation.  The  will  that  strives 
for  the  prevalence  of  righteousness  on  the  earth,  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  divine  "Will ;  the  spirit  that  communes  with  the 
inner  voice  to  follow  the  divine  Word  ;  —  as  there  is  in 
these  the  source  of  the  personality  and  freedom  of  man- 
so  there  has  been  in  these,  also,  the  building  of  the  nation* 
The  historical  forces,  with  which  no  others  may  be  com- 
pared, in  their  influence  upon  the  people,  have  been  the 
Puritan  and  the  Quaker.  The  strength  of  the  one  was  in 
the  confession  of  an  invisible  presence,  a  righteous  and 
eternal  Will  which  would  establish  righteousness  on  the 
earth,  and  thence  arose  the  conviction  of  a  direct  personal 
responsibility  which  could  be  tempted  by  no  external 


268  THE  NATION. 

splendor,  and  could  be  shaken  by  no  external  agitation, 
and  could  not  be  evaded  or  transferred ;  the  strength  of 
the  other  was  the  witness  in  the  human  spirit  to  an  eter- 
nal Word, — an  inner  voice  which  spoke  to  each  alone, 
while  yet  it  spoke  to  every  man;  a  light  which  each 
was  to  follow,  which  yet  was  the  light  of  the  world ;  and 
all  other  voices  were  silent  before  this,  and  the  solitary 
path  whither  it  led  was  more  sacred  than  the  worn  ways 
of  cathedral  aisles.  There  was  in  this  the  foundation  of 
the  personality  of  each,  and  the  secret  of  the  power  in 
which  they  have  wrought  upon  the  nation. 

Fifthly,  The  conception  which  defines  either  the  nation 
or  the  individual  as  subordinate  and  secondary,  is  in  its 
error  the  postulate  of  an  inevitable  antagonism.  If  either 
be  held  not  as  an  end  in  itself,  but  only  as  a  means  having 
the  other  for  an  end,  there  can  be  no  principle  of  unity 
and  no  form  of  reconciliation  ;  there  can  only  result 
the  negation  of  the  one  by  the  other.  Society,  then,  in  its 
irregular  course,  moving  from  one  contradiction  to  another, 
sweeps  through  the  extremes  of  socialism  and  individual- 
ism. It  alternates  between  a  communism,  in  which  there 
is  the  destruction  of  the  individual,  and  an  imperialism,  in 
which  as  in  anarchy  there  is  the  exaltation  of  the  individ- 
ual. There  is  in  each  of  these  phases  of  discordant  action, 
the  contradiction  to  the  nation  as  an  ethical  organism,  — -J 
the  subversion  of  the  organic  and  moral  being  of  the  peo- 
ple. The  result  in  each  is  the  decay  of  public  spirit, 
which  is  the  reflection  of  the  moral  aim  of  the  people,  and 
the  loss  of  even  the  conception  of  public  duties.  Thus  in 
an  individualism,  —  where  society  is  apprehended  as  hav- 
ing its  origin  in  the  volition  of  the  individual,  and  its 
continuance  subject  to  his  option,  and  government  is 
only  the  temporary  agency  of  certain  individuals,  its  right 
only  the  combination  of  private  rights,  its  will  only  the 
momentary  choice  of  private  persons,  its  end  only  the  fur- 
therance of  private  ends ;  and  in  socialism,  —  Tvhere  the 


THE  NATION  AND   THE  INDIVIDUAL.  269 

individual  is  apprehended  as  subordinate,  and  is  related 
to  the  government  only  as  its  subject,  and  in  himself  and 
his  services  is  held  as  if  owned  by  the  state,  —  there  is 
in  the  principle  and  result  the  comprehension  only  of 
private  capacities  arid  private  obligations,  and  in  each 
there  is  no  foundation  for  public  duties  and  public  rights. 
Their  conception  is  apparently  preserved  in  the  latter  as- 
sumption, but  in  it,  the  necessary  rights  of  the  state  itself 
can  only  be  apprehended  as  private  rights,  and  in  relation 
to  the  individual  the  state  is  only  a  private  person. 

There  is  wanting  also  in  the  artificial  conception  of  the 
state,  that  is,  its  conception  as  only  a  formal  sequence  or 
order,  the  necessary  condition  of  the  individual  develop- 
ment. It  is  necessarily  restrictive  of  the  individual.  This 
has  been  conceded  in  the  induction  from  the  theory  itself. 
Those  who  have  assumed  the  origin  of  the  state  in  a  com- 
pact, have  regarded  its  existence  as  the  necessary  and 
formal  limitation  of  the  individual,  and  therefore  it  has 
been  assumed  that  the  individual  surrendered  a  part  of 
his  actual  freedom  and  actual  rights  on  his  entrance  into 
it,  and  in  so  far  suffered  the  deprivation  of  them. 

The  organization  of  a  merely  formal  association,  as  the 
organization  of  a  sect  or  a  party,  is  necessarily  restrictive 
of  the  individual;  but  it  is  not  thus  in  an  organization 
formed  in  an  organic  life,  and  as  freedom  has  no  formal 
ground,  it  cannot  subsist  in  a  merely  formal  association, 
and  it  is  only  as  the  nation  is  an  organic  and  moral  per- 
son that  freedom  is  realized  in  it,  and  that  the  freedom  of 
the  individual  may  be  wrought  in  and  with  it,  in  its  normal 
development.1 

Sixthly,  The  nation  is  to  institute  and  maintain  for  the 
individual  the  sphere  of  an  individual  development  in  its 
external  conditions.  It  is  to  enable  each  to  bring  all  that 
is  in  the  type  of  his  individuality  to  its  fresh  and  free  ex- 
pression. There  is  to  be  room  for  each  that  he  may  do 

1  See  Bluntschli's  Geschichte  des  Gtaatsrechts,  etc.,  p.  622. 


270  THE  NATION. 

all  that  is  in  him  to  do,  so  that  if  there  be  failure  in  any 
attainment  it  is  in  the  homely  phrase,  because  it  was  not 
in  him.  The  state  by  no  enactment  is  to  thwart  or  re- 
strict the  working  out  of  the  individuality  of  each  in  its 
own  type.  It  is  not  to  hamper  or  debar  any  in  the  crea- 
tive use  of  the  talents  given  to  him,  but  in  its  external 
conditions  is  to  guard  them  against  let  or  hindrance.  The 
individuality  of  each  is  to  be  so  left,  that  each  may  work 
after  his  own  idea,  as  all  that  is  alien  to  this  must  neces- 
sarily be  rejected  as  abstract  or  evil. 

This  is  the  condition  of  the  moral  life,  and  its  real 
achievement.  In  this  alone,  as  the  individual  works  freely 
and  steadily  in  it,  is  the  only  sureness  of  strength  and 
repose  of  character.  It  is  in  this  that  the  manifold  riches 
of  life,  more  varied  and  opulent  than  in  the  process  of 
the  physical  world,  are  wrought.  There  is  thus  to  be  open 
to  each,  the  expression  of  his  own  conceit,  his  own  dispo- 
sition of  things,  his  own  fancy  alike  in  the  work  and  play 
of  life.  There  is  to  be  also  the  freedom  of  work,  and  free- 
dom of  thought  in  every  form,  in  theology,  in  politics,  in 
science,  and  freedom  of  study  and  research,  and  freedom 
of  communication  and  association,  and  freedom  of  cooper- 
ation in  industry  and  economy.  There  is  to  be  freedom 
of  action,  the  choice  of  a  home,  the  choice  of  a  vocation, 
the  choice  of  a  wife.  This  freedom  in  every  field  is  the 
condition  of  moral  strength.  In  it  the  bondage  of  the 
animal  is  overcome,  and  "  the  ape  and  tiger  die." 

The  higher  individuality  is  always  advancing  toward  the 
universal,  as  universality  is  a  necessary  element  in  person- 
ality. Thus  the  mere  eccentricity  of  style,  the  singularity 
of  manner  or  oddity  of  action  which  do  not  belong  to 
individuality,  tend  to  disappear,  as  all  mere  mannerism 
ceases  in  the  work  of  the  greater  artist. 

In  the  necessary  conception  of  a  moral  organism,  the 
nation  is  to  regard  the  individual  as  in  himself  a  whole, 
and  its  aim  is  to  be,  that  his  powers  shall  have  a  devel- 


THE  NATION  AND   THE  INDIVIDUAL.  271 

ent  in  a  consistent  whole.  Since  the  nation  compre- 
hends in  its  aim  the  universal,  not  as  an  abstraction,  but 
in  the  realization  of  personality,  it  diverges  from  its  own 
aim,  and  impairs  its  power  in  every  course  which  is  re- 
strictive of  the  individual  personality.  Its  attempt  imme- 
diately to  control  and  direct  it,  is  an  incursion  always 
marked  by  the  devastation  of  human  energy.  In  its  en- 
croachment it  can  only  mar  the  work  and  baffle  the  pur- 
pose of  men.  It  can  only  make  men  by  it  the  agents  of 
imperial  dominion  and  the  subjects  of  priestly  supersti- 
tion, the  tools  of  sects  and  the  trade  and  stock  of  parties, 
not  the  members  of  a  free  nation.  It  is  the  course  of 
principalities  and  powers,  not  of  the  government  of  free 
men. 

Seventhly,  The  nation  is  constituted  as  a  power  in  the 
education  of  the  individual.  The  individual  first  becomes 
a  person  in  the  nation.  It  acts  as  a  power  in  the  realiza- 
tion of  personality.  It  works  as  an  organic  energy.  The 
elements  of  a  moral  order  in  it  are  formative  of  charac- 
ter. In  the  nation  the  individual  apprehends  the  authority 
of  law  in  an  order  which  is  over  self  will,  and  he  has 
before  him  an  aim  which  transcends  a  selfish  end,  and  is 
lifted  into  the  consciousness  of  a  life  which  has  a  universal 
end.  In  the  nation  there  is  wrought  into  the  life  of  the 
individual  the  apprehension  of  a  purpose  formed  not  in 
momentary  and  transient  desire,  but  a  purpose  transmitted 
through  the  succeeding  generations  with  its  sacred  memo- 
ries and  mysterious  sympathies  and  quickening  hopes. 
The  nation  thus  becomes  for  the  individual  an  heritage, 
and  not  his  alone,  but  to  be  held  for  those  who  shall  follow 
him.  The  wealth  of  its  historical  associations,  and  the 
grandeur  of  its  historical  epochs,  are  its  gifts.  The  majes- 
ty of  its  law,  and  the  authority  of  its  government,  and 
its  conquering  power  are  around  him;  its  acquisition  is 
his  vantage-ground ;  its  domain  is  his  home  ;  its  order  is 
his  working  field ;  its  rights  arc  the  armor  it  has  forged 


272  THE  NATION. 

for  him  ;  its  achievements  are  the  nobler  heights  he  treads ; 
its  freedom  is  the  ampler  air  he  breathes. 

The  evil  of  things  is  in  the  degradation  of  personality, 
and  in  that  men  sink  into  the  undistinguished  mass.  But 
the  nation  in  its  being  as  a  moral  person  penetrates  the 
whole,  and  transfuses  it  with  its  spirit.  In  its  relationships 
it  becomes  the  realization  in  humanity  of  the  brotherhood 
of  men;  and  in  its  continuity,  it  takes  hold  upon  that 
which  is  eternal,  and  man  is  lifted  into  the  clearer  con- 
sciousness of  the  being  and  the  eternal  "  I  am,"  the  foun- 
dation of  all.  But  no  theory  of  interests,  and  no  scheme 
of  economy,  and  no  sect  in  its  exclusion,  and  no  imperial- 
ism in  its  dominion,  have  power  for  this,  and  it  belongs 
not  to  the  nation  as  these,  but  to  the  nation  because  it  is 
other  than  these. 

There  is  in  Stahl  a  suggestive  and  beautiful  illustration 
of  the  representation  of  the  state  in  the  fundamental 
thought  of  Plato  and  Rousseau.  The  true  postulate  and 
the  real  object,  it  is  admitted,  is  the  perfect  unity  and 
relationship  of  men  in  a  moral  kingdom,  and  with  this 
the  perfect  freedom  and  conscious  self-determination  of 
each ;  it  is  this  that  has  inspired  the  loftiest  conceptions  of 
the  state.  The  fundamental  thought  of  Plato  is  the  perfect 
unity  of  the  state,  but  as  involving  the  surrender  of  the 
individual  will ;  and  yet  it  is  this  which  casts  a  marvelous 
light  upon  the  pages  of  the  Republic,  —  the  feeling  that 
the  true  condition  of  humanity  is  only  realized  when  the 
individual  wholly  and  without  reserve  loses  himself  in  the 
unity  and  the  harmony  of  a  higher  moral  whole :  the  fun- 
damental thought  of  Rousseau  is  the  perfect  freedom  of  the 
individual,  and  he  asserts  as  the  problem  a  condition  in 
which  every  man  remains  perfectly  free,  so  that  when  he 
obeys  the  state  he  obeys  only  himself;  and  this  statement 
of  the  problem  is  the  deep  and  eternal  truth,  but  it  is  only 
to  be  solved  in  the  conclusion,  that  the  will  of  the  state 
and  the  will  of  the  individual  hold  substantially  the  same 
determination,  and  that  each  hold  a  moral  determination. 


THE  NATION   AND   THE  INDIVIDUAL.  273 

Theie  is  a  faith  in  the  destination  of  the  state  which 
makes  the  highest  moral  endeavor  no  vague  and  empty 
dream.  There  is  a  faith  which  while  it  may  call  for  the 
willing  sacrifice  of  the  individual,  yet  makes  it  not  all  in 
vain;  and  they  that  in  the  strength  of  that  faith  pass 
though  the  suffering  and  sacrifice  of  prisons  and  of  battle- 
fields, find  in  the  realization  of  the  life  of  the  nation  that 
the  words  are  justified,  "  He  that  loseth  his  life  shall 
find  it." 

NOTE.  Mr.  Mill  says:  "The  tendency  of  all  the  changes  taking  place  in  the 
world,  is  to  strengthen  society,  and  to  diminish  the  power  of  the  individual ; 
formerly  men  lived  in  what  might  be  called  different  worlds,  different  ranks, 
trades,  etc.  at  present  in  the  same.  They  now  read  the  same  things,  see  the  same 
things,  have  the  same  rights  and  liberties,  and  the  same  means  of  asserting  them. 
The  assimilation  is  still  proceeding ;  all  the  political  changes  of  the  age  promote 
it  since  they  all  tend  to  raise  the  low  and  lower  the  high."  —  On  Liberty,  pp.  8,  43. 
This  proposition  that  the  political  changes  taking  place  in  the  world,  —  the  politi- 
cal changes  tending  to  increase  the  power  of  society,  operate  to  diminish  the 
power  of  the  individual,  is  the  necessary  induction  of  Mr.  Mill's  conception  of 
liberty;  but  it  is  presented  with  no  historical  evidence.  These  changes,  it  is 
admitted,  are  towards  the  realization  of  a  stronger  life  in  the  nation,  that  is, 
the  organization  of  society ;  but  the  ages  of  national  development  have  always 
been  characterized  by  a  higher  individual  development.  These  changes  have 
been  the  greater  in  the  United  States,  in  German}*,  in  Russia,  in  Italy,  in  Spain ; 
and  the  most  superficial  survey  of  these  countries  makes  it  apparent  that  the 
greater  unity  and  power  in  the  realization  of  the  being  of  the  nation  has  been 
coincident  with  a  higher  freedom  —  a  higher  realization  of  the  individual  per- 
sonality. A  wider  illustration  might  be  drawn  from  the  history  of  preceding 
centuries,  as  for  instance,  the  age  of  the  higher  national  development  of  Eng- 
land was  the  age  also  of  Shakespeare,  of  Raleigh,  of  Bacon,  of  Milton. 

To  read  the  same  books,  to  hear  the  same  truths,  to  see  the  same  ideals 
in  art,  to  become  conversant  with  the  same  facts  in  history,  does  not  diminish 
individuality;  the  same  books  does  not  mean  books  of  sameness.  That  all 
men,  for  instance,  read  the  Bible,  or  Homer,  or  Dante,  or  Shakespeare,  or  in  the 
facility  of  travel,  have  opened  before  them  the  whole  world  of  art,  does  not 
diminish  individuality.  If  these  truths,  or  books,  or  works  of  art,  were  limited 
by  an  exclusive  patent,  it  would  not  aid  in  the  development  of  individuality. 
In  so  far  as  any  production  in  literature  or  art  has  a  universal  element,  the  per- 
sonality of  each  is  elevated,  instead  of  being  depressed  and  diminished  by  it. 
It  would  be  inferred  that  individuality  is  apprehended  in  the  preceding  citation 
as  only  a  formal  variety  or  contrast.  The  artificial  distinction  is  the  description 
of  a  personage,  and  not  of  personality. 

When  Mr.  Mill  assumes  a  diminution  of  individuality  as  the  result  of  the 
institution  of  the  same  rights,  the  fallacy  is  more  apparent,  but  is  most  danger- 
ous, foi  these  rights  have  their  consistent  foundation  in  no  artificial  representation 
of  the  state,  but  only  as  they  are  recognized,  as  the  rights  of  personality  —  tbe 
18 


274  THE   NATION. 

rights  of  man.  And  individuality  is  not  founded  in,  nor  developed  by,  artificial 
distinctions  and  grades  in  rank,  or  caste,  or  by  various  trades,  or  by  the  isolation 
of  provinces;  these  impair  it  as  it  is  compressei  in  their  external  moulds.  The 
force  of  custom  and  circumstance  weighs  upon  the  spirit,  sis  it  is  cramped  and 
bent  to  run  in  these  grooves.  The  counhy  may  be  called  the  more  free  which 
has  roads  open  through  it%;  but  it  is  not  the  more  free  when  one  is  always  re- 
quired to  take  a  road  through  the  valley  and  one  always  to  ride  on  the  hills.  The 
stronger  individuality  comes  to  hold  these  distinctions  which  are  cited,  only  as 
an  accident.  And  the  formal  distinctions  of  rights  and  liberties,  as  it  severs 
them  from  their  only  true  foundation,  instead  of  elevating  crushes  the  individual- 
ity of  men  and  fetters  their  free  action;  for  the  further  statement,  it  is  a  law  of 
unvarying  force,  that  when  in  the  nation  the  low  becomes  high,  it  is  not  by  the 
degradation  of  the  high,  but  in  the  elevation  of  the  whole. 

Mr.  Spencer  has  a  representation  of  the  state,  in  which  education  and  the 
institution  of  public  schools  by  the  state  is  regarded  as  an  infringement  upon  the 
sphere  and  rights  of  the  individual ;  and  recognizes  among  the  rights  of  the 
individual  "  the  right  to  ignore  the  state."  —  Social  Statics,  p.  229.  The  mean- 
ing of  this  term  is  made  further  apparent.  Mr.  Spencer  says:  "  Government 
being  simply  an  agent,  employed  in  common  by  a  number  of  individuals  to  se- 
cure to  them  certain  advantages,  the  very  nature  of  the  connection  implies  that 
it  is  for  each  to  say  whether  he  will  employ  such  an  agent  or  not.  If  any  one 
determines  to  ignore  this  mutual-safety  confederation,  nothing  can  be  said  except 
that  he  loses  all  claim  to  its  good  offices  and  exposes  himself  to  the  danger  of 
maltreatment."  —  Ibid,  p.  229.  It  may  be  well  to  have  the  induction  of 
an  out  and  out  individualism,  which  holds  the  state  only  as  a  ''  mutual-safety 
confederation,"  —  a  joint-stock  insurance  office,  and  regards  government  as  a 
private  u  agency,"  and  recognizes  for  the  individual,  "  the  right  to  ignore 
the  state."  Then  when  not  only  one  but  two  or  a  crowd  assert  their  rights  and 
ignore  the  state,  and  in  this  condition  rob  or  murder,  or  in  any  sort  maltreat  each 
other,  the  state  may  not  act  in  reference  to  it,  since  it  is  only  the  agency  in  the 
employ  of  other  individuals.  If  then,  —  if  the  illustration  may  be  allowed,  —  Mr. 
Spencer  assert  and  exercise  his  rights,  and  while  maintaining  his  right  to  ignore 
the  state  is  robbed  by  some  vagrant,  of  course  he  cannot  recover  through 
the  aid  of  the  government  the  property  which  he  has  lost;  or  the  vagrant,  not 
having  determined  himself  to  ignore  the  state,  may  bring  the  power  of  the  gov- 
ernment, being  the  agency  in  his  employ,  to  secure  him  in  his  actual  possession, 
—  it  of  course  refusing  to  admit  the  claim  of  one  who  had  ignored  the  state. 
Mr.  Spencer  further  describes  this  right  as  the  attitude  of  "  a  citizen  in  a  condi- 
tion of  voluntary  outlawry  "  —  Ibid,  p.  229.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  "  8 
citizen  in  a  condition  of  voluntary  outlawry ;"  and  one  fails  to  recall  the  po- 
litical position  of  any  whom  it  depicts,  unless  it  be  not  the  least  sig- 
nificant among  the  political  characters  in  Shakespeare,  —  Sir  John  Falstaff. 
The  satisfaction  with  which  Sir  John  would  receive  this  presentation  of  the 
state,  as  defining  his  position,  can  readily  be  imagined,  and  it  is  not  surprising, 
in  the  unshrinking  conclusions  of  the  writer,  to  find  on  the  following  page  a 
repetition  of  Sir  John's  inveterate  opinion,  —  "  The  state  employs  evil  weapons, 
soldiers,  policemen,  jailers,  to  subjugate  evil,  and  is  alike  contaminated  by  the 
objects  with  which  it  deals  and  the  means  by  which  it  -works."  — Ibid,  p.  230. 
The  difference  between  evil  doers  and  deeds,  and  this  use  of  so-called 
evil  weapons,  is  not  defined;  and  a  people  who  have  reason  will  not  regard  the 
soldiers  of  the  nation  as  justly  described  as  "evil  weapons,"  nor  believe  that 


THE  NATION  AND   THE  INDIVIDUAL.  275 

it  was  contaminated  by  them.  These  statements  need  no  discussion,  and  if 
there  be  an  illustration  of  a  barren  logic  applied  to  the  state,  or  in  Milton'i 
phrase,  "  ideas  that  effect  nothing,"  it  is  in  these  positions.  Their  significance 
is  mainly  in  their  evidence  that  at  the  outset  a  mere  individualism  loses  the 
conception  of  a  country,  and  the  relation  of  the  people  to  the  land.  They  are 
the  induction  of  empty  formulas ;  and  they  do  not  touch  the  solid  ground,  nor 
comprehend  any  fact  in  the  life  of  an  historical  nation.  And  it  is  the  peril 
of  a  people  if  these  theories  mould  its  thought;  the  right  to  ignore  the  state 
becomes  the  justification  of  secession  and  rebellion  and  of  every  political  crime, 
and  these  principles  in  the  thoughts  of  men  are  the  dissolution  of  society  and 
destruction  of  the  nation. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE   NATION    AND   THE   FAMILY. 

THE  nation  and  the  family  exist  in  a  necessary  and 
moral  correlation.  They  do  not  exist  in  identity ;  the 
family  has  its  own  unity  and  order,  and  the  nation  has 
other  powers  and  obligations,  so  that  when  society  is  con- 
stituted after  a  patriarchal  type,  and  does  not  pass  beyond 
that,  there  is  no  political  life,  nor  the  institution  of  an  his- 
torical power. 

The  family  is  the  natural  and  the  normal  condition  of 
human  existence.  It  is  not  the  unit  of  society,  that  is,  the 
ultimate  and  integral  element,  but  it  is  the  unitary  form  of 
*  society.  In  its  beginning  it  is  rude  and  imperfect  in  its 
structure,  but  with  the  progress  of  society  it  passes  on  to 
a  higher  development  and  a  more  perfect  conformance 
to  its  type  in  the  true  and  monogamic  organization. 

The  family  is  of  divine  institution,  and  is  constituted  in 
and  with  the  nation  in  the  moral  order  of  the  world.  It 
is  a  relationship,  and  there  is  thus  in  its  growth  the  educa- 
tion of  the  individual  and  the  formation  of  character. 

It  is  as  a  moral  order,  and  as  constituted  in  moral  rela- 
tions, that  the  family  has  its  origin  and  foundation,  not  in 
impulse  and  desire  and  transient  choice  ;  but  it  presumes 
in  its  beginning  and  its  course  the  assertion  and  continuity 
of  a  moral  determination,  and  therefore  impulse  and  tran- 
sient choice  must  be  brought  into  subjection  to  it.  It  is  as 
a  moral  order  that  it  has  its  own  law,  and  is  to  be  formed 
after  its  own  necessary  conception.  It  is  as  a  moral  order 
that  it  is  related  to  the  whole  order  and  organization  of 
society,  and  therefore  its  violation  affects  not  only  the 
individual  but  the  nation. 


THE  NATION  AND  THE  FAMILY.          277 


The  family,  in  its  divine  origin  and  in  its  formation  in' 
the  relations  of  a  moral  order,  and  in  its  consistence  with 
the  determination  of  personality,  is  a  holy  estate.  It  has 
its  beginning  in  the  "I  will "  of  those  who  enter  it;  and 
it  cannot  therefore  consist  with  the  transient  desire,  nor 
the  momentary  act  of  the  will,  and  these  are  excluded 
by  its  law,  and  the  continuous  character  of  the  moral 
determination  of  the  will  is  apprehended  in  it.  It  is  in 
conform ance  to  the  relations  of  a  moral  order ;  and  as 
these  relations,  while  they  consist  with  the  moral  deter- 
mination, had  not  their  origin  in  the  transient  volition  of 
man,  they  cannot  be  made  subject  to  it.  Since  man  did 
not  create  this  order,  in  the  possibility  of  sin,  he  may 
interrupt  or  violate  it,  but  he  cannot  change  it.  It  is  not 
therefore  existent  only  in  the  momentary  choice  of  sep- 
arate parties,  to  be  continued  or  dissolved,  as  the  inclina- 
tion of  either  or  both  may  dictate.  This  would  consist 
only  with  an  arbitrary  and  unfree,  and  therefore  an  im- 
moral, constitution  of  society. 

The  family  is  organic  ;  it  has  not  its  origin  in  an  enact-  . 
ment  or  a  contract ;  it  is  not  a  construction  in  conformance 
to  a  speculative  theory  or  scheme  ;  it  is  not  a  formal  rela- 
tion, but  an  organic  and  moral  relation  ;  it  is  not  a  formal  \ 
order,  but  the  natural  and  normal  order.  This  precludes 
its  assumption  by  a  certain  section  or  a  certain  class  as  an 
exclusive  or  a  proprietary  right.  This  precludes  also  the 
representation  of  the  origin  of  the  family  in  a  contract. 
The  contract  also  could  not  become  the  ground  of  the 
unity  involved  in  the  family,  since  those  who  form  a  con- 
tract remain  separate  parties  to  it. 

The  necessary  analogy  of  the  family  and  the  nation 
illustrates  their  necessary  structure,  and  there  is  in  it  the 
avoidance  of  the  error  of  many  political  abstractions  and 
the  infidelity  of  many  political  dogmas.  The  representa- 
tion of  the  nation  as  only  a  formal  organization,  or  as  an 
external  order,  or  as  the  exclusive  possession  of  a  few,  or 


278 


THE   NATION. 


as  formed  in  a  contract,  or  as  the  scheme  and  expedient  ol 
legislators,  is  inconsistent  with  the  necessary  analogy  of  the 
family  and  the  nation. 

In  the  organization  of  society  the  family  is  precedent  to 
the  nation,  while  in  its  continuance  it  is  subordinate  to  it. 
It  is  through  its  precedence  and  through  its  necessary  con- 
stitution in  organic  and  moral  relations,  that  it  appears  in 
an  historical  relation  with  the  beginning  of  the  nation, 
and  subsists  in  a  continuous  relation  with  it.  The  nation 
has  not  its  origin  in  the  family,  but  it  exists  in  a  necessary 
correlation  with  it,  and  in  the  development  of  each  this 
relation  must  always  have  a  deeper  recognition.  The 
first  indications  thus  of  the  organization  of  society,  are  in 
the  family,  the  life  of  the  patriarchs  and  the  patricians ; 
and  the  notions  of  a  formal  and  conventional  origin  of 
society  disappear  in  the  study  of  the  historical  beginning 
of  things. 

There  has  been  in  no  age  the  record  of  the  foundation 
of  the  nation,  but  there  has  been  coincident  with  it  the 
witness  to  the  sacredness  of  the  family.  In  the  ancient 
world,  or  rather  in  the  beginnings  of  the  historic  world, 
this  conception  is  central  and  prevails  in  its  art  and  liter- 
ature and  laws.  The  book  of  the  Genesis  is  mainly  filled 
with  the  record  of  the  foundation  of  the  family,  and  the 
incident  of  its  history ;  and  with  its  close  the  transition  is 
made  to  the  nation.  The  Iliad,  in  which  there  is  the 
deepest  reflection  of  the  spirit  of  archaic  life,  is  the  story 
of  a  war  for  the  vindication  of  the  purity  of  the  marriage 
bond,  and  its  heroes  are  those  who  go  to  battle  to  vindicate 
the  sacredness  of  the  family;  the  ^Eneid  is  the  story  of 
filial  duty  and  reverence,  and  in  each  the  spirit  of  the 
family  blends  with  the  nation,  and  in  each  there  is  the 
unfolding  of  a  national  life.  In  Judaea  the  family,  in  its 
primitive  law,  is  declared  to  be  holy,  it  is  to  be  maintained 
as  an  institute  of  the  nation  in  its  order,  and  its  violation 
is  to  be  punished  as  a  crime.  In  Greece,  its  earliest  insti- 


THE  NATION  AND  THE  FAMILY.         279 

tutions,  the  phratriaB  and  gentes,  are  the  evidence  of  the 
power  and  the  dignity  of  the  family.  In  Rome  the  rever- 
ence for  the  family  is  reflected  in  all  the  observances  of 
its  religion,  moulding  all  its  institutions  and  its  laws.  The 
law  has  a  universal  attestation,  that  when  the  life  of  the 
nation  has  been  the  deeper,  and  its  moral  aim  more  clearly 
apprehended  in  the  consciousness  of  men,  there  has  been 
a  clearer  recognition  of  the  sacredness  of  the  family, 
and  conversely  when  the  family  has  been  regarded  as 
formed  in  a  contractual  law,  or  a  momentary  obligation, 
it  has  impaired  the  power  and  spirit  of  the  nation.  In 
its  higher  development,  the  people  have  apprehended  in 
the  nation  the  glory  in  the  work  of  its  ancestors,  and  in  its 
future  the  enduring  heritage  of  its  children.  It  is  thus 
that  the  symbols  of  the  family  have  been  inwrought  with 
those  of  the  nation,  and  its  services  have  been  recounted 
in  the  inscription  of  ancestral  honors.  Its  glory  has  been 
in  its  devotion  to  the  nation,  and  it  has  kept  the  names  of 
those  whom  it  has  given  for  it  in  its  holiest  traditions. 
It  is  thus  that  reverence  for  the  fathers  and  their  work  is 
involved  with  the  continuity  of  the  nation,  and  therefore 
the  law  which  is  so  deep  a  revelation  of  the  conditions  of 
national  life,  "  Thou  shalt  honour  thy  father  and  thy 
mother^,"  is  made  the  premise  of  the  permanent  possession 
of  the  land  by  the  people. 

It  is  thus  that  in  the  decadence  of  national  life  there  is 
a  loss  of  the  consciousness  of  the  sacredness  of  the  fam- 
ily, and  a  consequent  increase  in  the  violation  of  its  law. 
It  is  the  degradation  of  the  family,  and  the  lower  appre- 
hension of  its  obligations,  that  is  represented  alike  by  all 
her  annalists  and  her  satirists,  as  the  cause  and  circum- 
stance of  the  ruin  of  Rome.  When  the  sacredness  of  the 
family  is  not  regarded,  when  it  is  no  longer  apprehended 
as  a  moral  order,  but  as  devised  by  men  and  shaped  only 
by  a  law  of  expediency,  and  subject  to  caprice,  the  life 
of  society  is  corrupted  in  its  sources. 


280  THE  NATION. 

Thus  also  the  system  of  slavery,  in  its  antagonism  to 
the  nation,  was  in  conflict  with  the  law  of  the  family ; 
and  among  the  slaves  in  certain  commonwealths,  family  life 
was  unknown,  and  many  on  emerging  from  slavery  had  no 
family  name,  but  only  the  designation  given  to  identify  the 
individual.1 

In  the  family  a  child  is  educated  for  the  nation.  It  is 
a  relation  which  has  a  moral  content,  and  character  is 
moulded  in  it ;  and  the  individual  grows  into  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  whole,  in  which  he  is  borne  beyond  his 
own  separate  and  selfish  end.  In  the  advance  of  childhood 
there  is  also  the  consciousness  of  a  continuous  relation, 
and  in  its  obedience  there  is  the  education  for  government 
and  for  freedom.  It  has  been  truly  said,  that  government 
so  depends  on  the  life  of  home,  that  for  a  homeless  com- 
munity, anarchy  or  despotism  would  be  the  alternative.2 

The  conception  which  prevails  of  the  nation  shapes  the 
family  also.  When  it  has  been  regarded  only  as  a  formal 
relation,  and  its  origin  referred  to  a  contract,  the  same  law 
has  been  assumed  as  defining  the  family  ;  when  it  has  been 
apprehended  in  a  mere  individualism,  the  conception  of  the 
family  as  organic  and  as  a  divine  institution,  has  also  per- 
ished, and  in  this  formalism  and  individualism,  there  is  not 
only  the  rejection  of  the  organic  and  moral  being*  of  the 
family,  but  its  necessary  relation  to  the  nation. 

The  necessary  relation  of  the  nation  to  the  family  is  the 
condition  of  the  rights  and  obligations  existent  in  that  rela- 
tion. The  nation  is  to  guard  and  maintain  the  family,  in 

1  Slavery,  in  its  necessary  antagonism  to  the  organic  being  of  society,  de- 
stroyed the  family  before  it  sought  to  destroy  the  nation;  and  there  is  nothing  in 
the  reconstruction  of  society  more  important  than  the  assertion  of  the  sacredness 
of  the  family  and  the  unity  of  the  household.    There  might  be  the  highest  value 
in  a  homestead  act  of  some  sort,  but  no  legislation  can  maintain  an  accumula- 
tion of  property  without  a  deep  assertion  of  the  family,  and  with  it,  in  the  ordi- 
nary administration  of  civil  rights,  nothing  can  prevent  that  accumulation. 

2  Rousseau  says,  "The  family  is  the  primitive  type  of  political  society." 
"  Prima  societas  in  ipso  conjugio  est,  proxima  in  liberis,  deinde    una  domus 
communia  omnia.    Id  autem  est  principium  urbis,  et  quasi  Seminarium  Rei- 
publicse."  —  Cicero,  De  Officiis,  i.  17. 


THE  NATION  AND  THE  FAMILY.         281 

conformance  to  its  normal  and  moral  conception,  and  to 
punish  its  violation,  which  is  in  a  higher  measure  a  crime 
against  the  whole.  The  nation  fails  in  its  office,  in  which 
it  is  clothed  with  power  and  authority  for  the  realization  of 
a  moral  order,  if  it  regards  with  indifference,  in  any  form, 
the  infraction  of  that  order.  It  is  thus  that  it  is  in  con- 
flict with  a  system  of  polygamy,  which  has  in  itself  the 
elements  only  of  an  imperfect  development  of  society,  or 
elements  at  variance  with  the  moral  unity  of  the  family,  so 
that  it  becomes  an  impulse  toward  barbarism.  It  is  thus, 
also,  that  it  is  to  prescribe  and  regulate  the  forms  and  con- 
ditions of  marriage,  and  to  require  that  it  be  undertaken 
not  slightly  nor  hastily,  but  with  a  definite  form  and  the 
attestation  of  the  obligations  of  the  state,  in  and  for  its 
maintenance.  It  is  thus  to  punish  the  violation  of  the  law 
of  the  family,  and  is  not  to  leave  it  to  the  wild  justice 
which  acts  in  private  revenge,  which  is  the  defect  of  gov- 
ernment ;  and  it  is  not  to  omit  adultery  from  the  calendar 
of  its  crimes,  nor  to  intermit  the  judgment  of  it  as  crime  ; 
it  is  an  abandonment  of  its  trust  if  it  fails  in  this. 

In  its  civil  rights  the  family  is  to  be  sustained  by  the 
nation  acting  in  and  through  the  order  of  the  common- 
wealth, and  its  inheritance  in  property,  and  the  guardian- 
ship of  its  members  left  dependent,  is  to  be  observed  by 
the  nation,  and  if  parents  themselves  are  derelict  in  duty 
to  their  children  and  to  society,  even  the  right  of  parental 
control  must  be  superseded  by  the  parens  patrice}-  But  the  / 
maintenance  of  the  family  in  its  moral  order  is  the  imme-  \ 
diate  obligation  of  the  nation,  and  although  it  acts  in  and 
through  the  process  of  the  commonwealth,  yet  its  obliga- 
tion is  not  limited  to  the  latter  sphere,  and  while  in  cer- 
tain periods  or  phases  it  may  act  more  effectually  through 
it,  yet  in  others  the  same  method  might  imperil  the  order 
and  being  of  the  whole ;  thus,  if  divorce  is  allowed  it 
may  devolve  immediately  on  the  nation  to  prescribe  its 

1  4  Whart.  R*ll. 


282  THE  NATION. 

conditions.  And  as  the  family  is  in  itself  a  moral  order, 
and  has  not  merely  a  formal  origin,  the  government  of  the 
state  cannot  simply  by  a  formal  act  annul  it,  and  the  di- 
vorce it  grants  is  not  the  ground  of  the  dissolution  of  mar- 
riage, but  the  authoritative  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the 
bond  of  the  family  has  been  already  dissolved  by  crime. 

The  hope  and  the  blessing  of  the  family  and  the  nation 
is  one.  Their  foundations  are  not  laid  with  human  hands. 
The  years  do  not  erase  them  from  the  record  of  human 
lives.1 

1  In  Troilus  and  Cressida,  Shakespeare  has  indicated  the  deep  moral  relation 
of  the  family  and  the  nation,  and  its  significance,  in  the  story  of  Troy.  The 
war  had  its  origin  in  the  violation  of  the  purity  of  marriage  life,  and  it  was  this 
which  involved  the  city  in  destruction.  The  doom  then  which  overtakes  Troilus 
and  Cressida  is  the  reflex  borne  on  through  the  years,  and  on  to  the  close  of  the 
city,  of  the  moral  judgment  upon  Paris  and  Helen.  There  is  an  expression 
not  only  in  the  catastrophe,  but  through  the  whole  drama,  of  the  organic  and 
moral  relation  of  the  family  and  the  state,  and  it  shapes  the  discourse  and  even 
lends  its  coloring  to  the  imagery  of  the  play.  It  is  thus  that  its  thought  dwells 
upon  the 

"  Unity  and  married  calm  of  states,'1 

and  thus  the  deepest  lessons  of  political  wisdom  are  no  digression,  but  are  nat- 
urally connected  with  the  conception  and  import  of  the  play,  and  the  tragedy  in 
its  close  consists  with  the  unity  of  the  whole.  This  political  significance  alone 
justifies  the  drama  from  the  criticism  of  Mr.  Verplanck,  which  has  the  assent, 
also  of  Mr.  White,  that  "  the  effect  of  the  play  is  impotent  and  incongruous." 
Mr.  Verplanck  yet  says  the  drama  "  displays  all  the  riches  and  energy  of  the 
poet's  mind  when  at  its  zenith;"  and  Mr.  White  places  it  "among  the  most 
thoughtful  of  all  his  plays."  White's  Ed.,  vol.  ix.  p.  10.  One  may  then  be 
reluctant  to  admit  the  conception  which  regards  the  conclusion  as  impotent  and 
incongruous,  and  the  political  lessons  as  only  detached  discussions  on  politics,  and 
the  awful  fate  at  the  close  as  arbitrary  and  misplaced.  But  if,  in  the  close  of  the 
history  of  Troy,  there  is  to  fall  upon  the  life  of  its  own  members  —  on  Troilua 
and  Cressida,  —  with  scarcely  an  immediate  premonition,  the  shadow  of  the  guilt 
which  was  the  beginning  of  the  war  and  the  destruction  of  the  city,  then  in 
the  relation  in  which  the  family  is  involved  with  the  nation  in  its  whole  course, 
and  from  which  no  individual  member  of  it  can  be  wholly  exempt,  there  is  the 
unity  of  the  drama,  and  then  the  same  doom  is  repeated  in  the  close  of  Troy 
which  impended  over  it  in  the  beginning  of  the  war,  as  if  in  that  alone  the 
burden  of  the  city  was  ended. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE   NATION   AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH. 

THE  nation  in  its  internal  order  and  administration,  is 
constituted  in  the  commonwealth.  The  family  is  the 
primary  form  of  human  society,  but  in  the  natural 
growth  of  society  the  family  does  not  remain  single  ;  it 
branches  outward,  forming  other  families,  or  in  the  course 
of  time  other  families  become  connected  with  it.  These 
have  as  separate  families  certain  relations  •;  they  are  sub- 
ject to  certain  common  necessities,  they  hold  certain  com- 
mon lands  in  occupancy,  and  with  labor  and  its  result  in 
the  satisfaction  of  necessities,  there  may  come  into  use 
some  mode  of  exchange  in  that  which  they  have  separately 
obtained.  The  return  of  labor  is  scant  and  irregular,  and 
often  is  subject  to  the  disposition  of  the  stronger,  but  in 
this  archaic  life  some  uses,  in  forms  however  rude,  prevail, 
in  which  interests  are  recognized,  and  although  they  may 
be  shaped  at  the  outset  by  the  will  of  some  patriarch,  these 
uses  obtain  a  certain  force.  It  is  the  community  which 
has  been  formed  in  the  transition  of  the  family,  through 
common  necessities,  and  the  adoption  of  common  uses 
and  the  accumulation  of  common  interests.  There  is  in 
this  the  beginning  of  the  system  of  civil  rights,  and  the 
building  of  the  commonwealth.1 

The  commonwealth  may  be  regarded  thus  in  its  formal 
organization  as  precedent  to  the  nation. 

1  In  defining  the  character  and  relation  of  the  United  States  and  a  particular 
State,  the  international  and  the  civil  state,  —  the  nation  and  the  commonwealth, 
this  term  is  used  in  a  strict  and  limited  significance.  Yet  it  is  not  arbitrary, 
and  may  claim  both  a  literal  and  historical  justification;  it  is  the  style  of 
many  of  the  earlier  and  larger  communities,  as  the  commonwealth  of  Massa- 
chusetts,  the  commonwealth  of  Virginia,  the  commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania. 


284  THE  NATION. 

In  the  process  of  society,  the  family  exists  in  an  organic, 
and  the  commonwealth  in  a  formal  relation  to  the  nation. 

The  distinction  in  the  organization  of  society,  of  the 
commonwealth  and  the  nation,  has  heen  recognized  by  the 
great  masters  in  political  science.  Aristotle  describes 
(1.)  the  family  —  OIKOS,  the  house;  (2.)  the  common-' 
wealth  —  Ko>/r»7,  the  community ;  and  (3.)  the  state  — 
n-oAis,  the  political  body ;  the  city  state.  The  common- 
wealth, he  says,  is  formed  for  mutual  advantage,  but  the 
state  is  formed  for  a  moral  end.1  The  conception  is  repre- 
sented by  Hegel,  with  great  clearness  and  completeness, 
and  forms  one  of  the  most  masterly  subjects  in  his  poli- 
tics. Hegel  maintains  the  distinction  through  the  whole 
structure  of  his  work.  He  defines  (1.)  the  family,  —  Die 
Familie;  (2.)  the  commonwealth,  Die  Biirgerliche  G-esell- 
schaft,  the  civil  state ;  and  (3.)  the  nation,  Der  Staat,  the 
international  state.2 

The  commonwealth  is  the  civil  order  of  society.  It  is 
a  formal  organization,  and  is  based  upon  external  and  nec- 
essary relations,  and  its  action  is  through  a  civil  system 
for  the  security  of  the  private  rights  of  persons. 

1  Politics,  bk.  i.  ch.  2. 

2  Philosophic  des  Rechts,  p.   66.    Hegel  defines  the  commonwealth  as  "  an 
association  of  men  as  private  individuals,  and  thus  as  existent  in  a  formal  rela- 
tion, —  a  relation  formed  through  their  wants,  and  in  the  civil  constitution  as  a 
means  for  the  security  of  persons  and  property,  and  in  an  external  order  for 
their  special  and  common  interests  ; "  he  says,  "  the  commonwealth  as  an  ex- 
ternal order,  in  its  realization  recedes  into  and  subsists  in  the  state."  —  Ibid. 
p.   215.    The  commonwealth,  he  says,  has  three  phases,  the  satiafaction  of  the 
individual  through  labor  and  exchange,  or  "  the  system  of  wants; ''  the  security 
of  liberty  and  property,  or  "  the  jural  process;  "  and  the  care  of  special  interests 
as  a  common  interest,  or  "  the  police  and  corporation."  Ibid.  p.  248.    He  says 
the  commonwealth  "  is  constantly  apprehended  and  represented  as  the  state, 
but  the  state  is  other  than  this,  and  its  law  is  higher  than  this,  it  is  the  righteous- 
ness," etc.  —  Ibid.  p.  69.     The  representation  of  the  commonwealth,  Die  Biirger- 
liche Gesellschaft,  in  Hegel,  may  well  be  described  by  Rothe  as  meislerhaft.    It 
is  in  no  respect  open  to  the  criticism  of  R.  von  Mohl,  that  it  is  introduced  simply 
in  conformance  to  a  threefold  logical  sequfertce.  —  Geschichte  «  Literateur  de» 
Staatsuissenschaften,  vol.  i.  p.  82.    The  distinction  is  maintained  with  certain 
modifications  by  Rothe.  —  Theologische  Ethik,  vol.  ii.  pp.  101-120.    Bluntschli 
rejects  the  formal  distinction  of  the  civil  corpoiation  and  the  state,  but  the 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH^  ,  28& 

1   C'-J      /:>,      v 

It  is  the  society  of  men  existing  in  jurul  rkmflons,  dn^in 
associations  which  are  defined  in  jural  forms.  ^Ttfs>  mem-/' 
bers  exist  in  no  organic  unity  and  continuity^  but/lji 
formal  relation,  through  the  existence  of  private  inters 
in  their  individual  or  collective  character.     It  embraces  the 
administration  of  civil  justice  in  its  formal  order. 

The  commonwealth,  since  it  is  formed,  in  the  necessary 
relations  of  life,  has  the  law  of  its  action  in  necessity.  It 
is  thus  that  its  characteristic  is  order,  and  its  object  is  se- 
curity through  the  integrity  of  the  collective  whole. 

The  commonwealth  has  for  its  end  protection,  —  the 
protection  of  private  interests,  as  individual  or  collective. 
Its  organization  is  for  the  protection  of  interests  involved 
in  the  necessary  relations  of  men.  It  exists  for  the  secur- 
ance  of  life  and  liberty  and  property,  through  the  institu- 
tion of  the  system  of  civil  rights.  It  embraces  those  wants 
which  are  necessary  in  life  and  their  satisfaction.  It  is  the 
same  which  those  who  have  held  only  a  negative  and  for- 
mal notion  of  the  nation  have  apprehended  and  sought 
to  embody  in  that. 

The  commonwealth  has  for  its  province  the  economic 
organization  of  society.  The  system  which  is  ordinarily 
described  as  public  economy  belongs  to  it,  and  writings  on 
economy  are  mainly  occupied  with  subjects  which  are  its 
concern.  It  comprehends  the  relations  of  the  vast  and 
complex  industrial  processes  of  society.  There  is  in  its 
immediate  scope  the  separate  and  the  cooperative  interests 
of  agriculture,  of  trade,  of  mining,  and  of  the  mechanic 
arts.  It  is  to  direct  the  movements  of  production  and  of 


position  he  afterwards  assumes  may  be  allowed  to  justify  it,  since  he  is  there 
under  the  necessity  of  establishing  in  the  organization  of  the  state  a  separate 
Dower  or  department,  which  is  immediately  concerned  with  private  or  civil 
fights  and  the  economy  of  the  state.  —  Allgemeines  Statsrechts,  vol.  i.  p.  458. 

The  present  historical  tendency  indicates  that  in  the  unity  of  the  German 
nation  the  separate  states,  as  Prussia,  Saxony,  Hanover.  Bavaria,  will  exist  as 
distinct  commonwealths  or  civil  societies,  forming  in  this  respect  a  very  close 
parallel  to  the  United  States. 


286  THE  NATION. 

exchange.  The  adjustment  of  the  relations  of  labor  and 
of  capital  which  represents  the  accumulated  result  of  labor, 
is  to  be  referred  to  it.  It  is  to  regulate  the  division  of 
labor,  and  that  which  is  of  higher  value,  the  union  and 
cooperation  of  labor,  and  that  which  is  of  still  higher 
value,  it  is  to  maintain  the  freedom  of  labor. 

The  commonwealth  has,  in  connection  with  the  eco- 
nomic interests  and  laws  of  society,  the  department  of 
social  statics.  The  enactment  of  sanitary  laws  and  regula- 
tions, and  the  foundation  of  sanitary  institutions,  belongs 
to  it.  It  is  to  take  necessary  measures  for  the  protection 
of  health,  and  to  secure  society  against  whatever  may  be 
a  public  nuisance  or  a  public  peril.1 

The  commonwealth  is  formed  in  the  institution  and 
maintenance  of  civil  rights.  The  individuals  composing 
it  are  private  persons,  and  as  such  they  are  comprehended 
by  it;  they  have  each  their  end  in  the  necessary  rela- 
tions of  life  to  secure,  and  the  security  of  their  private  in- 
terests is  the  necessary  end  for  which  the  commonwealth 
exists.  The  individual,  therefore,  may  require  the  security 
of  his  necessary  rights  from  the  commonwealth,  and  the 
commonwealth  may  require  from  each  that  he  also  hold 
these  rights  for  others  secure.  There  is,  therefore,  to 
be  established  through  it  the  protection  of  each  in  his 
necessary  rights  and  his  necessary  avocation,  with  no 
undue  hindrance  or  unequal  restriction. 

The  commonwealth  is  instituted  in  the  maintenance  of 
justice  in  the  necessary  relations  of  life,  or  civil  justice. 
This  is  the  law  which  is  formative  of  its  whole  organiza- 
tion, and  is  defined  in  a  jural  system.  Justice  is  to  be 
recognized  as  necessarily  involved  in  the  organization  of 
society,  and  is  to  be  affirmed  as  law,  and  to  be  adminis- 

1  The  establishment  of  a  quarantine  and  quarantine  regulations,  thus  falls 
naturally  within  its  object,  but  this  ought  not  to  be  regarded  solely  as  the  con- 
cern of  a  separate  commonwealth,  and  is  not  subject  to  internal  administra- 
tion. Its  institution  in  the  harbor  of  New  York,  is  of  no  more  consequence  to 
the  people  of  the  commonwealth  than  to  the  adjacent  territory. 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  287 

tered  between  man  and  man.  Its  violation  is  to  be  set 
forth  as  crime,  and  the  penalties  incurred  by  crime  are 
to  be  defined  and  imposed.  Since  justice  in  the  common- 
wealth or  civil  justice  is  apprehended  as  existent  in  the 
necessary  relations  of  life,  it  is  to  be  maintained  through 
its  whole  extent  for  all  men,  and  there  is  to  be  the  recog- 
nition of  the  equality  of  all  men  before  the  law.  It  is  not 
to  assume  a  different  principle  of  action  for  different  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men.  It  is  to  assert  a  justice  which  is 
impartial,  or  it  becomes  itself  an  organized  injustice.  It 
is  to  establish  justice  in  the  authority  of  law,  and  to  judge 
the  infraction  of  law  as  crime.  It  is  to  maintain  justice  for 
every  man ;  and  private  revenge  is  forbidden  as  the  rude 
justice  of  an  unorganized  and  barbaric  state.  The  execu- 
tion of  justice  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  necessary  condi- 
tion of  the  commonwealth  through  its  whole  extent,  and 
its  whole  power  is  to  act  in  its  ultimate  enforcement.  It 
is  to  be  the  guardian  of  every  individual.  The  object, 
in  the  increase  of  the  commonwealth,  to  be  steadily  re- 
garded, is  that  the  process  of  justice  shall  not  be  neutral- 
ized through  old  and  imperfect  judicial  organizations, 
where  the  abuses  tend  only  to  the  emolument  of  a  special 
and  conservative  profession,  as  in  the  commonwealth  of 
Connecticut ;  and  that  it  shall  not  become  entangled  in 
intricate  formalities,  to  become  what  Cromwell  called  the 
law-system  of  his  age,  "  a  tortuous  and  ungodly  jungle  ;  " 
nor  that  it  shall  affect,  beyond  the  necessity  of  scientific 
precision,  a  phraseology  unknown  to  the  people  ;  nor  that 
justice  shall  be  made  so  costly  that  any  shall  be  debarred 
from  access  to  it.  Justice  is  to  be  open  and  free  to  all. 
It  should  be  the  same  for  all,  and  thus  in  the  apprehen- 
sion of  crime  no  special  or  private  rewards  should  be 
allowed,  but  it  should  be  held  as  the  office  of  the  state ; 
and  no  officer  of  the  state  nor  of  its  police,  should  be 
allowed  to  receive  a  tender  of  reward  from  private  persons, 
nor  should  any  gift  be  made  te  justice.  A  system  of 


288  THE  NATION. 

private  rewards  gives  to  wealth  and  power  a  special  secur- 
ity, which  is  not  open  to  all,  nor  promotive  of  the  security 
of  the  whole,  and  is  but  a  slight  advance  from  a  system  of 
private  revenge.  The  commonwealth  is  to  bring  crime  to 
the  light,  and  its  object  is  to  protect  rights  and  not  crimin- 
als. The  fair  trial  of  all  charges  is  to  be  had,  and  the 
evidence  of  all,  the  plaintiff  and  defendant  alike,  is  to  be 
received  that  all  may  be  known.  The  object  is  to  make 
the  conviction  of  crime  sure  and  the  punishment  inevita- 
ble, and  to  determine  the  actual  injury  and  the  actual 
degree  of  guilt.  The  course  of  law  thus  is  not  to  be  merely 
formal  and  mechanical,  as  in  an  imperial  code,  but  it  is  to 
regard  the  varying  aspects  of  human  action  and  the  vary- 
ing conditions  of  human  life.  It  is  to  take  into  account 
the  age  and  circumstance  and  mental  condition,  and  all 
which  may  be  exculpatory  in  them,  and  to  regard  crimes 
to  which  different  degrees  of  guilt  attach,  and  for  which 
there  must  be  corresponding  degrees  in  the  punishment 
imposed.  Thus  the  law,  instead  of  an  unvarying  and  me- 
chanical application,  presumes  the  deliberation  of  those 
before  whom  trial  is  had,  and  the  judgment  of  a  judge. 

The  commonwealth  has  the  institution  of  its  procedure 
in  the  common  law.  This  is  its  exclusive  province.  It  is 
this  law  which  has  been  instituted  in  the  ascertainment  of 
the  justice  involved  in  the  necessary  relations  of  men.  It 
recognizes  a  solid  justice  existent  in  the  development  of 
these  relations.  It  is  shaped  in  the  jural  definition  of  these 
relations.  It  acknowledges,  therefore,  as  a  prescriptive 
right,  that  which  by  long  continuance  has  been  wrought 
in  the  use  and  wont  of  men.  It  holds  the  right  of  ways 
which  are  open  to  all  alike,  and  fair  to  all,  and  have  been 
long  trodden  by  the  steps  of  men.  It  is  this  recognition 
of  justice  as  existent  in  the  necessary  relations  of  men, 
which  is  the  precedent  of  the  common  law,  and  the  condi- 
tion of  its  legal  positivism.  It  is  not  the  tradition  of  any 
code  nor  commandment,  however  ancient. 


THE  NATION  AND  THE   COMMONWEALTH.  289 

The  principles  to  be  regarded  in  the  constitution  of  the 
commonwealth  are  those  which  define  its  unity  and  its 
scope.  The  unity  of  the  commonwealth  is  that  of  the 
unitary  organization  of  justice.  Its  authority  is  to  have 
within  itself  no  formal  restriction  and  no  sectional  limita- 
tion. It  is  as  a  crime  against  the  whole  that  the  violation 
of  its  law  is  to  be  regarded  and  punished.  The  denial  of 
the  unity  of  the  organization  of  the  commonwealth  was 
the  ground  of  opposition  to  the  important  legislation  of 
the  commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania,  in  the  succession  of 

1  crimes  and  outbreaks  of  violence  in  Schuylkill  County  in 
1867,  and  also  to  a  system  of  metropolitan  police  in  certain 
separate  districts.  But  the  commonwealth  fails  of  its  end 
when  crime  is  allowed  to  remain  unpunished,  or  rights 

1  become  insecure  through  defect  in  its  organization.  There 
is  no  sectional  right  in  the  outlawry  of  a  certain  locality, 

j  to  preclude  the  action  of  the  commonwealth  through  its 

j  whole  extent. 

The  scope  of  the  commonwealth  has  also  no  restriction 
in  the  institution  of  civil  rights,  and  the  determination  of 
the  whole  civil  order  is  within  its  sphere.  The  reason  and 

I  the  right  of  the  legislation  of  the  commonwealth  of  Penn- 
sylvania, which  modified  the  whole  tenure  of  property, 
and  was  so  great  an  advance  in  establishing  the  freedom 
of  property,  placing  real  property  upon  the  same  basis  in 
certain  respects  as  personal  property,1  was  opposed  with 
the  argument,  not  that  the  act  was  in  itself  unjust,  but  that 
it  was  beyond  the  scope  of  the  commonwealth.  But  this 
rests  in  a  deficient  apprehension  of  the  commonwealth,  for 
in  the  normal  civil  order  and  civil  administration,  there  is 
no  formal  limit  to  its  action. 

The  territorial  extent  of  the  commonwealth  is  commonly 
shaped  by  some  circumstance,  or  some  consideration  of 
civil  administration.  It  conforms  mainly  to  the  content  of 
the  commonwealth,  and  when  once  established  it  is  to  be 

l  Price  Act,  April  iS,  1853. 
19 


290  THE   NATION. 

held  stably,  as  if  it  were  itself  bottomed  in  the  common 
law,  and  as  describing  old  and  established  interests  which 
have  grown  up  and  repose  in  it. 

The  nation  in  its  civil  organization  may  constitute  a  sin- 
gle commonwealth,  or  it  may  be  divided  into  many  and  sep- 
arate commonwealths,  and  these  may  increase  in  number, 
with  the  extension  of  the  national  domain,  and  the  chano-e 
and  growth  of  population. 

The  conception  of  the  commonwealth,  as  it  has  been 
represented  in  political  science,  has  had  its  precedent  in 
the  slow  advance  of  civilization.  Its  organization  is  not 
new  nor  strange,  nor  did  it  come  forth  at  once  complete  in 
all  its  powers  in  the  beginning  of  the  American  state. 
The  form  may  be  discerned  in  its  germ  in  the  first  unfold- 
ing of  the  civilization  of  the  Teuton,  and  may  be  traced 
in  the  succeeding  institutions  of  our  ancestors  as  they 
emerge  from  the  shadows  of  German  forests.  It  appears 
in  the  structure  of  the  constitution  of  England,  in  the  or- 
ganization of  counties  for  civil  administration  and  the  man- 
agement of  local  and  special  concerns,  while  embraced  in 
the  kingdom,  and  subject  to  the  Crown  and  the  Pailia- 
ment,  in  whom  is  the  determination  of  the  political  whole. 
It  appears  in  the  distinction  of  the  Hundred,  and  however 
rude  and  imperfect  may  have  been  the  form  of  this,  and 
however  widely  writers  may  differ  in  defining  its  character 
and  limitations,  they  all  agree  in  the  reference  to  it  of  the 
transaction  of  judicial,  and  the  management  of  local  con- 
cerns ;  its  primary  object  is  that  of  civil  administration. 
There  is,  in  the  "  Lives  of  the  Chief  Justices,"  an  illustra- 
tion of  the  manner  in  which  this  distinction  was  guarded., 
The  writer  says  of  the  office  of  Chief  Justiciar,  as  intro- 
duced by  William  the  Conqueror  from  Normandy,  "  The 
functions  of  such  an  office  would  have  ill  accorded  with  the 
notions  of  our  Anglo-Saxon  ancestors,  who  had  a  great 
antipathy  to  centralization,  and  prided  themselves  upon 


THE  NATION  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH.      291 

enjoying  the  rights  and  advantages  of  self-government. 
The  shires  being  parcelled  into  Hundreds  and  other  subdi- 
visions, each  of  these  had  courts  in  which  suits  both  civil 
and  criminal  might  be  commenced."1  It  was  not  by  a 
single  assembly  of  men,  however  great,  that  so  vast  and 
noble  a  structure  was  conceived,  nor  in  any  single  age  has 
it  been  perfectly  realized.  It  has  been  formed  slowly  in 
the  long  struggle  of  society  toward  the  better  attainment 
of  its  end.  It  will  always  obtain  a  more  perfect  form  with 
the  progress  of  the  people. 

The  commonwealth  has,  in  the  historical  development 
of  the  United  States,  its  amplest  and  its  highest  organiza- 
tion. There  has  been  the  illustration  of  its  strength  and 
its  conformance  in  the  order  of  the  whole ;  and  also  of  its 
evil,  when,  severed  from  the  whole,  it  has  sought  to  build  a 
civilization  in  the  furtherance  of  some  separate  and  special 
interest,  and  to  base  in  that  the  foundation  of  society. 

The  sphere  of  the  commonwealth  must  be  ascertained 
by  its  content ;  by  what  it  is,  and  not  by  what  it  is 
assumed  to  be ;  by  its  actualization,  and  not  by  any 
abstract  conception  of  law,  or  empty  theory  of  society. 
In  the  illustration  of  the  nature  of  the  commonwealth, 
reference  is  made  to  the  constitution  of  the  common- 
wealth of  Pennsylvania,  not  only  because  it  lies  nearest 
at  hand,  but  as  that  of  one  of  the  original  thirteen  com- 
monwealths, - —  a  commonwealth  as  central,  and  as  conserv- 
ative in  the  habit  of  the  community  as  any,  and  comprehen- 
sive of  as  great  and  varied  interests  as  any,  and  it  has  had 
in  the  revision  of  its  constitution  the  aid  of  lawyers  of  sin- 
gular eminence.2  And  since  what  is  assumed  for  one  com- 

1  Lives  of  the  Chief  Justices,  vol.  i.  p.  33.     The  distinction  may  be  traced 
in  its  outline  in  defining  the  nation  and  the  commonwealth,  in  the  distinction  of 
public  rights  and  duties   as   supreme  and  subordinate.  —  See  Christian's  Bl, 
Comm.  chart,  iii. 

2  The  commonwealth,  as  the  civil  organization  of  society,  opens  a  more  imme- 
diate field  to  lawyers;  but  then,  also,  by  the  same  influence,  they  may  be  with- 
drawn too  exclusively  within  its  contemplation,  and  are  apt  to  become,  and 
for  the  same  reason,  —  that  is  as  also  withdrawn  exclusively  in  it,  —  what  Dr. 


292  THE  NATION. 

monwealth,  in  its  nature,  is  assumed  for  all,  the  constitu- 
tion of  this  may  be  taken  as  a  legal  instrument  to  furnish 
its  illustration. 

The  formal  organization  of  the  commonwealth  is  in  legis- 
lative, executive,  and  judicial  powers,  through  which  its 
order  is  construed.  The  legislative  department  has  its 
province  presumed  in  the  nature  of  the  commonwealth, 
and  its  special  limitation  in  the  judicial  department.  The 
judicial  organization  and  form  of  procedure  is  necessarily 
more  amply  defined  in  the  object  of  the  commonwealth. 
The  executive  department  is  defined  in  the  office  of  the 
governor, — a  name  not  indicative  of  political  precedence, 
nor  suggestive  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  state,  but  denoting 
the  direction  of  the  internal  administration,  and  the  regu- 
lative or  magisterial  character  of  the  civil  office. 

The  commonwealth  is  the  institution  of  the  authority  of 
law  in  the  civil  order.  It  forbids  that  any  shall  be  ar- 
raigned but  by  due  process  of  law.1  It  allows  neither 
private  revenge  nor  private  judgment  to  assume  the  be- 
hest of  justice.  It  regards  crime  as  a  violation  of  the 

Arnold  called  the  political  economists,  —  "  those  one-eyed  men."  But  their  ser- 
vices have  indeed  been  conspicuous  in  the  formation  of  the  constitution  of  the 
commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania;  and  there  is  no  commonwealth  in  which  the 
jural  scope  has  been  more  clearly  maintained,  or  the  province  of  its  judicial  in 
distinction  from  legislative  powers  more  carefully  and  wisety  guarded,  and  where 
the  constitution  has  been  so  little  cumbered  with  the  detail  which  belongs  to  the 
sphere  of  legislative  enactment.  It  bears  the  impress  of  the  work  of  Wilson,  and 
Gibbons,  and  Chauncey,  and  Sargeant,  and  Price,  and  Binney,  and  Wallace. 

1  The  earliest  historical  assertion  of  law  is  not  in  the  enunciation  of  a  principle, 
but  in  a  judgment  on  a  case  (see  Maine's  Ancient  Law,  p.  3).  and  there  is  in  it, 
whatever  else  there  may  be,  the  presumption  of  a  substantial  order  in  the  neces- 
sary relations  of  life,  and  crime  is  adjudged  in  the  interruption  or  violation  of 
this;  in  this  may  be  tracad  the  historical  development  of  the  common  law.  Its 
origin  is  in  no  formal  code,  nor  in  the  tradition  of  a  formal  code. 

"There  have  been,"  Mr.  Maine  says,  "three  agencies  which,  in  its  historical 
course,  have  shaped  the  process  of  the  common  law,  legal  fiction,  equity,  and 
legislation."  The  first,  whatever  its  advantage  in  some  periods,  is  a  rude  device, 
and  belongs  mainly  to  the  past;  the  second  must  constantly  seek  the  aid  of 
legislation,  as  it  finds  expression  in  a  positive  form;  and  the  third  becomes  the 
more  potent  agency.  It  is  only  within  a  very  recent  period  that  legislation  has 
been  brought  to  shape  the  course  or  to  act  in  the  explication  of  the  common  law 
in  the  commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania. 


THE  NATION  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH.      293 

peace,  and  therefore  as  against  the  commonwealth,  and  in 
its  name  it  is  judged.1 

The  commonwealth  is  to  institute  courts  for  the  admin 
istration  of  the  civil  order.2    The  historical  origin  and  form- 
ation of  courts  affords  the  widest  illustration  and  evidence 
of  its  province.     The  court  is  constituted  for  the  assertion 
and  protection  of  civil  rights. 

There  is  for  every  one  subject  to  the  authority  of  the 
commonwealth,  the  right  to  bring  his  cause  into  court,  and 
each  may  be  required  to  appear  before  the  court,  and  the 
award  of  justice  is  rendered  by  it.  The  access  to  the 
court  is  for  all,  and  "  every  man  for  an  injury  done  him  in 
his  lands,  goods,  person  or  reputation,  shall  have  remedy 
by  the  due  course  of  law,  and  right  and  justice  adminis- 
tered without  sale,  denial,  or  delay."  3  Before  the  court  a 
trial  of  the  cause  is  had,  that  justice  in  the  matter  may  be 
ascertained.  The  method  is  demonstrative,  and  evidence 
is  given  and  the  facts  in  the  case  examined.  The  parties 
bring  in  witnesses  to  their  suit,  and  everything  concern- 
ing it  is  laid  before  the  knowledge  of  the  judge  and  the 
jury  by  whom  the  verdict  is  rendered.  These  successive 
steps  are  themselves  rights,  and  belong  to  every  one  sub- 
ject to  the  authority  of  the  commonwealth.  There  is  for 
each  the  right  to  appeal  to  the  court,  to  call  witnesses,  to 
have  council  in  law,  and  to  bring  before  the  judge  and  jury 
all  that  may  concern  the  action.  Every  individual  in  the 
commonwealth  to  whom  its  writ  may  come,  is  required  to 

1  Constitution  of  the  Commonwealth,  Art.  I.  sec.  I.    Art.  II.  sec.  1.     Art.  VI. 
sec.  10. 

"  The  style  of  all  process  shall  be,  *  The  Commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania,' 
and  all  prosecutions  shall  be  carried  on  in  the  name  and  by  the  authority  of  the 
Commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania,  and  conclude  '  against  the  peace  and  dignity 
of  the  same.'  "  —  Ibid,  Art.  V.  sec.  11. 

2  "The  judicial  power  of  this  commonwealth  shall  be  invested  in  the  supreme 
court,  in  courts  of.  oyer  and  terminer,  and  general  jail  delivery,  in  a  court  of 
common  pleas,  orphan's  court,  register's  court,  and  a  court  of  quarter  sessions 
of  the  peace  for  each  county;  in  justices  of  the  peace;  and  in  such  other  courts 
as  the  legislature  may  from  time  to  time  establish."  —  Ibid,  Art.  V.  sec.  1. 

»  Jbid,  Art.  IX.  sec.  11. 


294  THE  NATION. 

answer  the  summons  of  the  court.  In  the  feudal  age,  the 
nobility  regarded  it  as  an  injustice  that  they  should  be 
held  to  obey  this  summons,  or  that  the  evidence  of  all  men 
should  be  received  in  respect  to  them,  but  in  the  new  Par- 
liament House  in  London,  a  painting  by  the  side  of  the 
throne  represents  the  arrest  of  the  heir  to  the  throne  by  a, 
London  constable.  The  facts  are  to  be  brought  out,  and 
that  only  can  be  held  as  authentic  which  is  brought  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  judge  and  jury.1 

In  the  court  the  method  of  procedure  is  formal  and  ex- 
act. This  formality  gives  to  the  cause  of  every  man  the 
same  dignity.  It  invests  every  charge  and  every  suit,  by 
whomsoever  it  is  brought,  with  the  same  solemnity.  The 
same  summons  sets  forth  the  claim  alike  of  all,  whether 
rich  or  poor  or  citizen  or  stranger.  This  formality  secures 
justice  from  abuse,  and  forbids  that  the  cause  of  any 
should  be  passed  by  hurriedly  or  slightingly. 

In  the  court  the  procedure  is  open  to  all.  Its  sessions 
are  announced,  and  the  whole  action  is  public,  since  the 
crime  is  not  alone  against  the  individual,  but  against  the 
peace  and  dignity  of  the  whole ;  and  although  the  cause  is 
between  certain  parties,  yet  the  justice  involved  affects  the 
whole  ;  and  the  punishment  is  not  alone  the  satisfaction  of 
a  private  wrong,  but  the  consequence  of  the  violation  of 
the  law. 

In  the  court  the  examination  is  before  a  jury,  and  judg- 
ment is  rendered  by  it,  and  the  verdict  it  returns  when  the 
offense  is  proven,  is  called  a  conviction.  This  is  the  office 
of  the  jury.2  The  trial  by  a  jury  is  not,  as  De  Lolme  de- 
scribed it,  simply  to  resign  the  individual  to  the  judgment 
of  a  few  persons ;  but  as  Hegel  says,  it  is  the  demand  of 
the  conscience  of  the  individual  that  justice  be  meted  out 
to  him,  and  the  conviction  is  rendered  as  expressive  alike 
of  the  conscience  of  the  individual,  and  the  conscience  of 
the  community  which  the  jury  represent.  It  is  the  claim 

1  Constitution  of  the  Commonwealth,  Art.  IX.  sees.  9  and  11. 
a  Ibid,  Art.  IX.  sec.  6. 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  295 

over  impulse  and  desire,  of  the  conscience  of  every  man, 
and  the  witness  of  his  own,  his  true  and  better  nature, 
which  no  crime  can  wholly  silence,  and  which  by  crime 
has  been  most  wronged.  The  punishment  which  follows 
is  the  manifestation  of  crime.  It  is  not  primarily  reform- 
atory, and  it  may  not  always  of  itself  have  that  effect  upon 
the  individual,  but  it  is  the  sequence  of  crime  in  which  its 
nature  is  manifested.  The  conscience  of  the  individual 
and  of  the  whole  demands  that  crime  shall  be  brought  to 
light,  and  that  punishment  shall  be  inevitable,  and  the 
commonwealth  fails  of  its  end  in  so  far  as  this  is  not  ac- 
complished. The  significance  of  punishment  by  solitary 
confinement,  is  in  the  fact  that  it  is  the  reflex  of  the  nature 
of  crime  itself,  for  evil,  as  the  subversion  of  personality, 
involves  the  loss  of  freedom,  and  is  the  separation  of  one 
from  his  fellows,  and  the  severance  of  relationships,  and  is 
itself  an  isolation  :  thus  solitary  imprisonment  is  but  the 
manifestation  of  the  sequence  of  crime.  The  adoption  of 
this  mode  of  punishment  indicates  an  advance  in  civili- 
zation. 

The  commonwealth  is  to  make  provision  for  the  institu- 
tion of  officers  in  the  civil  administration,  as  for  instance, 
the  district  attorney  and  the  justice  of  the  peace.  The 
former  office  in  its  very  imperfect  construction,  has  some 
of  the  best  elements  of  jural  progress ;  and  of  the  latter, 
Stahl  says,  that  the  office  embodies  perhaps  the  highest 
conception  in  the  Anglican  civil  system.  It  represents  the 
peace  of  society  as  conditioned  in  justice.  It  is  to  consider 
in  its  inception  the  charge  of  the  interruption  of  the  peace 
of  society,  and  there  was  a  deep  significance  in  the  formula 
in  which  the  old  writs  ran :  "  In  the  peace  of  God,  and  the 
commonwealth."  It  has  to  provide  also  for  the  institution 
of  all  offices  of  civil  order,  as  sheriffs,  justices,  constables, 
coroners,  prothonotaries,  registrars,  and  recorders.1 

It  belongs  to  the  commonwealth,  in"  the  guardianship  of 
i  Constitution  of  the  Commonwealth,  A/t.  VI.  sees.  6,  7;  Art.  IV.  sec.  6. 


296  THE  NATION. 

interests,  to  enforce  the  execution  of  contracts  and  of  wills, 
and  the  administration  of  estates.  It  has  in  its  scope  those 
institutions,  so  fundamental  in  the  civil  order,  —  the  con- 
tract and  the  will.  The  form  in  which  these  are  executed 
is  of  consequence,  since  they  are  to  be  maintained  and 
enforced  as  positive  law.  It  is  thus  requisite  that  all  wills 
shall  be  proven,  and  all  deeds  and  titles  are  to  be  given  in 
the  name  of  the  commonwealth,  and  it  is  to  provide  for  the 
probate  of  wills  and  the  recording  of  deeds.1 

It  belongs  to  the  commonwealth,  in  the  securance  of 
interests,  to  regulate  the  relations  of  capital  and  labor,  and 
to  maintain  and  protect  the  division  and  cooperation  and 
freedom  of  labor.  It  is  to  adjust  the  legal  rate  of  interest 
upon  capital.  It  is  to  charter  corporations  and  to  provide 
for  their  privileges,  immunities,  and  estates.  In  the  direc- 
tion of  intercourse  in  trade  and  exchange,  it  has  the  super- 
vision of  roads  and  highways,  excepting  only  military 
and  post-roads  which  are  in  the  immediate  control  of  the 
nation.  In  the  security  of  health  and  in  sanitary  provis- 
ions, it  is  to  institute  officers  and  boards  of  health,  and 
hospitals,  and  asylums,  and  homes  for  the  infirm  or  inca- 
pable, or  aged  or  insane,  and  it  is  to  provide  for  the  poor 
and  to  appoint  overseers  of  them.2 

It  is  for  the  commonwealth  to  establish  municipalities, 
and  to  grant  and  convey  municipal  rights  or  privileges,  and 
to  institute  the  order  and  confer  the  powers  which  are 
requisite  for  the  civil  administration,  in  the  organization 
of  counties,  towns,  and  boroughs  within  its  limits.  The 
execution  of  its  powers  is  through  a  police  and  constabu- 
lary. 

There  is  in  this  summary  the  substantial  content  of  the 
constitution  of  the  commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania,  to 
which  reference  was  made  in  illustration  of  the  common- 
wealth in  itself.  This  which  was  ascertained  to  be  its  nec- 
essary conception,  has  been  its  realization  in  its  normal 
i  (institution  of  the  Commonwealth,  Art.  V.  sec.  10.  2  Jbid,  Art.  VII.  sec.  6. 


THE  NATION  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH.      297 

process.  With  the  formal  exception  which  is  to  be  noticed, 
and  which  is  not  in  all  respects  inconsistent  with  its  admin- 
istration, this  is  all  there  is  in  it.  There  is  no  power  be- 
yond this  that  could  be  actualized  or  strive  for  actualization 
in  it  without  involving  some  contradiction.  There  is  be- 
yond this  only  the  sphere  of  legal  fictions,  of  empty  theo- 
ries, and  political  abstractions.  There  is  beyond  no  solid 
ground.  It  is  the  field  of  restless  visionaries  and  political 
dreamers ;  and  instead  of  the  domain  of  substantial  order, 
it  has  proven  the  confine  of  anarchy  and  secession  and  re- 
bellion. In  it  an  evil  ambition  has  wrought,  and  the 
forces  of  disorder  and  division  have  mustered. 

The  powers  which  alone  remain  to  be  noticed,  and  which 
constitute  an  exception  to  the  preceding,  are  those  which 
refer  to  divorce,  to  education,  to  the  resident  qualifications 
of  an  elector,  and  to  the  militia  as  a  local  or  constabulary 
force.  These  powers  are  such  as  in  part  are  properly 
related  to  the  normal  administration  and  economy  of  the 
commonwealth,  and  therefore  in  certain  aspects  may  be 
referred  to  it,  or  they  are  powers  which,  when  left  to 
the  commonwealth,  fail  to  obtain  any  substantial  actual- 
ization. There  is  nothing  in  them  to  justify  the  specula- 
tion, which  has  assigned  the  most  limitless  scope  to  the 
commonwealth.  The  limitless  in  human  affairs  is  indeed 
that  only  which  is  untravelled  by  thought.  There  is,  in 
the  civil  and  political  life,  no  sphere  of  arbitrary  and  indefi- 
nite powers ;  the  arbitrary  is  without  the  domain  of  law, 
i  and  the  indefinite  is  the  unformed  thought  and  purpose, 
the  vagueness  and  weakness  which  appears  in  incapacity 
of  thought  and  irresolution  of  will. 

There  is  an  article  on  divorce,  defining  certain  restric- 
tions of  the  legislative  power  in  its  action  upon  it,  and 
then  referring  it  to  the  courts.  The  administration  in 
divorce,  in  its  connection  with  the  common  law,  passes 
consistently  to  the  commonwealtli ;  but  the  nation  has  an 


298  THE  NATION.   - 

immediate  obligation  in  the  maintenance  of  the  family  in 
its  moral  unity  and  moral  order,  and  if  it  fails  to  attain  this 
in  its  action  through  the  commonwealth,  it  is  imperative 
that  it  shall  assume  its  immediate  authority.  There  is  no 
form  that  can  intervene  by  which  it  can  be  divested  of  its 
obligation  to  maintain  a  moral  order. 

There  is  an  article  on  public  instruction,  which  provides 
for  the  institution  of  schools,  so  that  all  may  be  taught 
free.  But  while  the  administration  of  a  system  of  educa- 
tion may  be  referred  to  the  commonwealth,  its  institution  is 
of  national  importance,  and  also  of  national  obligation,  and 
in  the  defect  of  the  commonwealth,  its  authorization  should 
proceed  from  the  nation. 

There  is  an  article  on  the  qualifications  of  an  elector,  in 
which  the  conditions  of  electoral  power  in  the  common- 
wealth are  defined,  while  its  electors  are  described  as 
"citizens  of  the  United  States,"  and  its  special  provision 
in  respect  to  the  commonwealth,  is  the  limitation  of  the 
term  of  residence  necessary  before  any  election  for  "  a 
citizen  of  the  United  States  who  had  previously  been  a 
qualified  voter"  in  the  commonwealth,  in  order  to  vote 
at  an  ensuing  election.  The  constitution  of  the  United 
States  describes  the  qualifications  of  an  elector,  but  its 
definition  is  simply  inclusive  of  the  qualifications  of  the 
lower  house  in  each  commonwealth,  and  the  more  specific 
qualification  is  referred  to  the  commonwealth  ;  but  since 
the  right  to  vote  is  a  political  right,  and  integral  in  the 
nation,  the  provision  for  it  should  be  in  the  fundamental 
law,  and  its  guaranty  in  the  supreme  law  of  the  people. 
The  terms  and  conditions  of  electoral  power  cannot  be  left 
to  the  discretion  of  each  separate  commonwealth,  without 
the  risk  of  unequal  qualifications  which  might  act  as  a  dis- 
turbing force,  or  tend  to  create  alienation  or  division,  and 
the  definition  of  political  power  belongs  to  the  nation. 

There  is  an  article  which  provides  for  the  arming,  or- 
ganizing, and  disciplining  of  the  militia,  and  describes  the 


THE   NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  299 

governor  as  the  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  and  navy 
of  the  commonwealth.  Of  this  it  is  only  to  be  said  that 
the  commonwealth  has  no  right  to  declare  war,  and  over* 
the  militia  the  governor  has  power  only  within  the  limits 
of  the  commonwealth,  and  he  is  thus  only  commander-in- 
chief,  "  except  when  they  are  carried  into  the  service  of 
the  United  States."  It  is  only  for  internal  order  and 
administration  that  the  governor  has  immediate  command, 
and  as  the  militia  acts  as  a  constabulary  or  police,  to  pre- 
vent a  breach  of  the  peace  of  the  commonwealth  within 
its  borders.  When  the  governor  is  represented  as  the 
"  commander-in-chief  o£  the  army  and  navy  of  the  com- 
monwealth," the  office  is  not  further  defined.  Since  the 
commonwealths  of  the  nation  have  for  the  most  part  no 
sea-ports  and  no  sailors,  and,  in  some  instances,  no  nav- 
igable waters,  the  title  can  scarcely  be  supported.  It  is  a 
name  for  which  there  is  no  reality,  and  except  for  lawyers 
it  leads  beyond  all  soundings.  No  navy  has  ever  set  sail, 
and  no  sailor  has  ever  trod  its  deck,  only  constitutional 
lawyers  have  exchanged  its  signals  and  answered  its 
salutes.  It  is  as  a  legal  fiction,  if  it  can  make  that 
claim,  but  a  painted  ship  upon  a  painted  ocean,  although 
for  the  lawyers  who  sail  upon  it,  out  on  the  limitless 
expanse,  it  is  as  good  as  oak  and  iron.  And  the  gov- 
ernor in  this  character,  on  the  streams  to  which  he  may 
often  be  confined,  is  like  Wordsworth's  fisherman,  "  tricked 
out  in  proud  disguise."  But  this  assumption  of  military 
and  naval  authority  in  its  consequent  weakness,  is  indic- 
ative of  the  neglect  of  the  nation  in  its  own  sphere,  to 
provide  for  the  instruction  and  organization  of  the  whole 
people,  as  a  military  force,  which  is  its  express  obligation. 
The  commonwealth  is  necessarily  itself  concerned  with 
the  militia  only  as  a  constabulary ;  and  when  the  military 
organization  has  been  left  to  it,  it  has  been  at  the  most 
defective,  and  its  display  a  masquerade  to  fill  an  idle  holi- 
day. There  is  in  the  commonwealth  no  conception,  and 


300  THE   NATION. 

no  power  of  war,  and  it  may  neither  declare  war  nor 
conclude  peace. 

These  powers,  in  divorce,  in  education,  in  the  definition 
of  electoral  laws,  and  in  the  instruction  and  organization  of 
the  militia  for  local  purposes,  are  alone  those  which  have 
any  description  in  the  constitution  of  the  commonwealth, 
that  are  not  exclusively  within  its  normal  conception,  and 
they  in  certain  respects  are  not  inconsistent  with  its  admin- 
istrative order.  But  they  are  in  a  necessary  and  imme- 
diate relation  to  the  nation,  and  their  exclusive  reference 
to  the  commonwealth  becomes  the  defect  in  their  institu- 
tion, or  the  source  of  weakness  and  of  radical  error  in  the 
organization  of  the  whole. 

The  nation  and  the  commonwealth  exist  in  a  two-fold 
relation :  firstly,  the  nation  is  immanent  in  the  common- 
wealth ;  and  secondly,  the  nation  is  external  to  the  com- 
monwealth. 

The  nation  is  immanent  in  the  commonwealth. 

The  commonwealth  of  itself  is  incomplete,  and  presumes 
the  being  of  the  nation  in  which  it  subsists.  The  com- 
monwealth of  itself  has  no  permanence,  and  in  the  nation 
alone  it  has  its  consistent  end.  It  is  only  as  the  nation 
is  immanent  in  it,  that  it  is  brought  into  relation  to  its  ob- 
ject in  the  unity  of  the  whole.  Then  it  is  no  longer  sim- 
ply the  private  interest  of  the  individual  which  is  its  end, 
but  it  is  the  end  of  the  nation  itself,  —  a  moral  interest 
which  gives  to  justice  alone  its  strength.  It  still  institutes 
and  administers  justice  with  reference  to  the  individual, 
and  acts  in  the  maintenance  of  private  interests ;  but  its 
work  is  no  more  for  a  private  end  alone,  nor  simply  that 
each  individual  shall  be  secure  in  his  special  rights,  but 
that  all  sources  of  disorder  shall  be  removed,  and  all  that 
hinders  the  administration  of  justice  shall  be  overcome. 
It  is  thus,  as  the  commonwealth  subsists  in  the  nation  and 
its  moral  order,  that  it  brings  to  individual  rights  a  perma- 
nence. 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  301 

The  civil  order  which  may  have  the  highest  formal  com- 
pleteness, when  the  life  of  the  nation  is  no  longer  present 
in  it  as  a  sustaining  power,  is  merely  abstract.  The  mosv. 
perfect  institutes  of  a  civil  system  have  of  themselves  no 
enduring  power.  The  historian  of  Roman  jurisprudence 
may  justly  describe  the  great  worth  to  society  of  those 
civil  institutions  —  the  contract  and  the  will,  —  but  there 
was  in  them  no  inherent  strength  to  save  the  society  of 
Rome  when  the  nation  was  crumbling  beneath  the  weight 
of  empire.  In  them  there  was  no  renovating  energy  to 
stay  the  corruption,  or  to  check  the  swift  decay  that  was 
undermining  all  within.  It  is  thus  that  in  imperial  ages 
there  may  be  a  higher  culture  and  structure  of  the  civil 
order,  as  in  France  under  the  empire.  It  is  thus,  also,  that 
the  study  of  the  civil  law  of  itself  has  the  attraction  only  of 
an  external  symmetry,  and  impresses  one  only  as  a  formal 
system  and  as  a  cold  and  lifeless  anatomy.  It  has  not  the 
spirit  of  an  historic  power.  The  genius  of  the  great  mas- 
ters of  the  Justinian  era  can  throw  over  it  only  a  faint 
glow,  and  the  energy  of  a  living  spirit  is  wanting  in  the 
most  splendid  development  of  the  civil  organization  of  so- 
ciety.1 

It  is  only  in  the  immanence  of  the  nation  that  the  com- 
monwealth has  its  continuance  in  history.  The  structure, 
which  is  a  combination  of  private  interests,  could  not  exist 
of  itself  in  the  strenuous  conflict  of  the  moral  forces  of  his- 
tory. There  can  exist  in  history  no  mere  negation ;  and 
the  commonwealth  of  itself  can  have  no  place  among 
those  powers  which,  in  the  life  of  humanity,  bear  its  issues 
to  their  close.  The  assumption  of  the  foundation  of  society 
in  the  commonwealth  has  been  the  precedent  of  a  false 
civilization.  Since  the  commonwealth  exists  only  as  the 
organization  of  the  individual  and  collective  interests  of 
private  persons,  when  the  foundation  of  society  has  been 
sought  in  it,  it  has  assumed  a  selfish  principle  as  its  law, 

1  See  Merivale's  History  oftfie  Romans,  vol.  vii.  p.  429. 


802  THE  NATION. 

and  its  end  has  been  the  predominance  of  a  selfish  in- 
terest.    And  as  the  commonwealth  is  formed  in  the  neces- 
sary relations  of  life,  it  cannot  become  of  itself  a  power 
in  history  which  is  a  moral  order,  and  in  the  realization 
•  of  freedom.     It  holds  the  web  and  the  woof  in  which  those 
historic  figures  appear ;  but  it  apprehends  not  the  unity  of 
that  design  which  through  centuries,   is  wrought  in  the 
.conscious  purpose  of  nations. 

The  nation  in  its  sovereignty  is  immanent  in  the  com- 
monwealth. Its  determination  is  the  supreme  law;  the 
law  of  the  nation  is  the  law  in  every  commonwealth.  The 
constitution  of  the  United  States  is  the  constitution  of  ev- 
ery State.  The  real  sovereignty  is  in  the  nation,  and  the 
will  of  the  organic  people  is  prevalent  through  the  whole. 
The  power,  as  in  any  organism,  acts  through  every  mem- 
ber, and  thus  conversely  the  injury  to  a  part  involves  the 
injury  of  the  whole,  and  the  peril  to  any  commonwealth  is 
the  peril  of  the  nation. 

The  nation  in  its  freedom  is  immanent  in  the  common- 
wealth. This  freedom  is  not  simply  the  securance  of 
civil  rights,  aid  that  in  some  transition  may  be  better 
effected  in  an  imperialism,  but  it  is  in  the  nation  in  its 
moral  being.  The  life  of  the  nation  thus  may  become  im-^ 
perilled  through  the  commonwealth  when  its  freedom  is 
not  realized  in  it ;  since  then  its  spirit  is  no  longer  appre- 
hended in  it,  and  there  is  a  separation  from  the  conscious- 
ness of  its  historical  aim,  and  that  corruption  which  is 
consequent  when  one  existing  among  the  parts  acts  upon 
the  whole  without  any  comprehension  of  the  whole.  The 
unity  also  of  the  nation  is  imperilled,  if  the  freedom  of  the 
people  is  not  realized  through  the  whole,  and  slavery  has 
its  sequence  in  dissolution  and  division. 

The  nation  is  external  to  the  commonwealth. 

The  commonwealth  is  invested  with  a  formal  sovereignty. 
It  is  not  the  sovereignty  of  the  people,  in  its  organic  being, 
but  a  formal  sovereignty,  limited  to  a  certain  process  and 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  303 

to  the  formal  exercise  of  certain  powers  for  the  prosecution 
of  that  process.  The  power  is  existent  in  the  sovereignty 
of  the  organic  people,  and  it  is  only  in  reference  to  the 
formal  process  in  which  the  commonwealth  is  constituted, 
that  the  nation  is  external  to  it. 

The  commonwealth  has  a  formal,  but  not  an  organic 
unity.  It  is  a  whole  only  in  its  relation  to  the  nation, 
and  through  it,  to  the  other  commonwealths  of  the  nation. 

The  commonwealth  is  defined  by  boundaries  which  are 
formal,  that  is,  they  are  not  the  natural  boundaries  which 
div'de  nations,  as  oceans,  or  mountains,  or  rivers ;  nor  the 
historical  boundaries  which  separate  one  people  from  an- 
other, in  their  integral  life,  and  are  shaped  in  the  struggle 
and  conflict  of  history ;  but  they  are  the  lines  and  angles 
which  are  traced  in  the  formal  demarkation  of  an  estate, 
such  lines  as  are  drawn  by  the  surveyor  and  the  engineer. 
They  cross  rivers  and  mountains,  and  stretch  away  from 
the  sea,  and  sweep  by  points  of  external  defense,  where 
one  people  might  make  a  stand  against  another  people. 
If  there  be  an  uncertainty  as  to  these  boundaries,  the  com- 
monwealth cannot  maintain  its  position  against  what  might 
be  presumed  an  invasion,  by  any  declaration  of  war  on 
the  invader,  since  it  cannot  declare  war,  nor  can  it  deter- 
mine its  own  boundaries  in  dispute,  but  the  settlement  of 
them  is  with  the  nation.  These  boundaries  thus  cannot 
be  conceived  as  those  of  a  separate  political  people  in  its 
historical  course,  and  illustrate  the  fact  that  the  common- 
wealth has  in  itself  no  elements  of  permanence  in  history. 
In  the  agitation  in  its  movements,  they  would  be  obliter- 
ated as  lines  drawn  in  the  sand. 

The  nation  exists  in  an  external  relation  to  the  com- 
monwealth ;  but  the  commonwealth  has  in  itself  no  ex- 
ternal relation,  excepting  only  to  the  nation .  and  to  the 
other  commonwealths  through  the  nation.  It  compre- 
hends no  foreign  relation,,  that  is,  a  relation  to  an  interna- 
tional state.  It  can  enter  into.no  league  nor  alliance,  nor 


304  THE  NATION. 

form  any  treaty.  It  a  crime  has  been  committed  against 
its  peace  by  any  person  escaping  to  a  foreign  state,  it  is 
only  through  the  nation  that  extradition  is  obtained,  while 
on  any  commonwealth  in  the  nation  direct  requisition  may 
be  made.  If  there  be  any  invasion,  it  is  the  nation  which 
is  invaded,  and  the  peril  is  for  the  whole  people,  and 
with  its  whole  physical  power  it  is  to  meet  the  invader. 

The  commonwealth  as  constituted  in  this  formal  system, 
as  a  civil  corporation,  that  is,  as  an  artificial  person,  has  cer- 
tain formal  rights,  or  more  exactly,  immunities.  If  the 
divided,  and  in  the  development  of  the  nation  so  rapidly 
increasing  commonwealths,  have  each  a  necessary  contin- 
uity, and  the  capacities  of  an  organic  people,  in  its  organic 
being  in  history,  then  the  rights  of  each  are  the  rights  of 
a  nation  in  its  sovereignty,  and  each  may  assume  corre- 
spondent duties  and  obligations.  But  the  commonwealth 
has  no  continuance  in  its  separation  from  the  nation,  and 
its  rights  are  existent  in  its  formal  organization,  and  it  is 
the  nation  alone  which  can  recognize  these  rights.  These 
rights  are  maintained  for  the  commonwealth,  only  as  the 
commonwealth  exists  in  the  nation. 

Firstly ;  There  is  for  the  commonwealth  the  right  that 
the  nation  shall  maintain  it  as  integral  in  itself.  It  can 
detach  no  commonwealth,  and  allow  none  to  be  detached 
from  itself.  It  can  withdraw  its  authority  from  none,  and 
can  alienate  or  transfer  none.  It  is  not  only  existent  in 
each,  but  it  is  existent  in  its  unity  and  its  entirety  in  each. 
tt  is  thus  that  in  the  invasion  or  peril  of  one,  it  is  the 
whole  that  is  invaded  or  imperilled. 

Secondly;  There  is  for  each  the  right  to  the  mainte- 
nance of  its  organization,  in  its  normal  action  as  a  common- 
wealth. The  order  and  the  execution  of  justice  is  to  be 
maintained  in  each,  and  if  necessary  by  invoking  the 
strength  of  the  whole.  The  due  form  of  law  in  the  privi- 
lege and  protection  of  courts,  and  the  trial  by  jury,  is  to  be 
sustained  in  each.  The  validity  of  contracts  is  to  be  en- 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  305 

joined  in  each,  and  through  the  separate  commonwealths, 
the  nation  is  to  maintain  for  each  full  faith  for  its  reports 
and  judicial  procedure. 

Thirdly ;  There  is  the  right  to  the  maintenance  in  each, 
of  the  freedom  of  the  nation.  None  can  be  reduced  to  a 
condition  of  mere  subjection,  as  to  some  imperial  power 
which  is  over  and  isolated  from  it.  The  right  to  the  free- 
dom of  the  nation  is  in  so  far  a  condition  of  unity  that  if  it 
be  not  realized  in  the  commonwealth,  the  latter  becomes 
in  fact  only  a  province,  separated  from  the  sovereignty  and 
consequent  freedom  of  the  whole,  and  its  members  have 
no  real  citizenship. 

Fourthly ;  There  is  the  right  in  each  to  the  maintenance 
of  a  definite  boundary  and  domain.  The  lines  are  those 
which  define  the  order  of  the  organized  administration  of 
justice  in  the  securance  of  private  rights,  that  is,  the  rights 
defined  in  a  civil  system  and  the  maintenance  of  private 
interests.  These  boundaries,  while  they  are  not  such  as 
separate  one  historical  people  from  another,  are  such  as 
appear  in  a  vested  or  a  customary  right.  They  are  the 
lines  which  are  marked  in  the  survey  of  property  as  in  a 
private  estate,  and  property  requires  exact  limits  and  seeks 
security  and  stability  in  them,  while  change  might  tend 
to  disorder,  and  occasion  conflicting  forms  and  titles  and 
unsettle  values.  These  lines  are  therefore  to  be  carefully 
defined.  While  there  is  thus  no  moral  ground  which 
could  hold  them  in  the  supreme  necessity  of  the  peo- 
;  pie,  in  the  normal  condition  they  are  to  be  maintained  in 
1  the  order  of  the  whole.  It  is  thus  that  there  is  in  them 
!  that  attraction  of  association,  and  that  wealth  which  gathers 
with  the  course  of  the  generations,  and  they  become  like 
the  lines  of  an  homestead.  They  are  to  be  so  regarded, 
that  no  new  commonwealth  shall  be  formed  out  of  another, 
but  with  the  concurrence  of  its  own  consent  and  of  the 
authority  of  the  nation. 

Fifthly ;  There  is  the  right  to  the  maintenance  in  every 

20 


806  THE  NATION. 

commonwealth  of  a  form  of  government  and  organization 
corresponding  to  that  of  the  nation.  There  is  to  be  in 
none  the  incongruity  which  would  appear  in  discordant 
forms.  There  is  to  be  in  none  a  form  of  government 
which  shall  isolate  it  from  the  order  of  the  nation  and  of 
the  commonwealths  coexistent  with  it  in  the  nation.  The 
republic  is  to  maintain  for  every  commonwealth  a  repub- 
lican form  of  government. 

These  rights  in  their  maintenance  necessarily  presume 
the  being  of  the  nation,  and  have  apart  from  it  no  actuali- 
zation. They  are  defined  and  established  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  nation  and  in  its  supreme  law,  and  form  the 
high  guarantees  of  the  constitution. 

The  more  definite  enumeration  of  rights  is  consequent 
from  the  formal  process  of  the  commonwealth,  or  from  the 
formal  equality  of  one  commonwealth  with  another  in  the 
maintenance  of  interests  ;  as  for  instance,  the  right  that  for 
every  crime  committed  within  its  limits  as  against  its  own 
peace  and  dignity,  and  in  violation  of  its  order,  the  trial 
shall  be  had  within  its  limits ;  that  every  criminal,  where- 
ever  he  may  be  in  the  nation,  shall  be  remanded  to  it  on 
the  requisition  of  its  governor ;  that  upon  the  seas,  rivers, 
and  highways  of  the  nation  each  alike  shall  have  the  same 
right  of  way ;  that  each  shall  be  regarded  alike  in  every 
regulation  of  commerce  and  revenue,  and  in  these  none 
have  precedence  to  another  ;  that  no  vessels  bound  to  or 
from  one,  shall  clear  or  pay  duty  to  another ;  that  the  citi- 
zens of  each  shall  alike  be  eligible  for  the  offices  and  trusts 
of  the  nation ;  and  the  right,  when  its  corporate  rights  and 
interests  are  endangered,  to  enter  as  a  party  in  court,  and 
the  corresponding  necessity  to  appear  and  answer  a  sum- 
mons as  a  party  in  court,  but  it  is  only  in  a  court  insti- 
tuted by  the  nation  that  this  right  of  the  commonwealth  is 
construed ;  and  the  right  finally  that  to  the  citizens  of  each 
in  its  normal  order  there  shall  be  given  and  secured  all 
the  rights,  privileges,  and  immunities  which  belong  to  those 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  307 

of  any  of  the  several  commonwealths  in  the  nation,  or  the 
right  to  a  formal  equality  in  the  commonwealth. 

The  commonwealth  is  a  formal  organization.  If  the 
order  of  the  commonwealth  is  overthrown  in  anarchy  or 
rebellion,  and  its  course  is  interrupted  or  overborne,  it  is 
in  and  through  the  nation  alone  that  there  is  the  power 
of  reconstruction.  The  organization  is  formal,  and  it  is 
upon  the  people  in  its  organic  and  moral  being,  that  is,  the 
nation,  that  there  is  the  ultimate  obligation,  although  not 
always  the  immediate  action,  in  the  institution  of  rights 
through  the  whole  and  for  the  whole.  The  nation  can 
therefore  allow  no  civil  formula  to  intervene  between  it 
and  a  condition  in  which  civil  rights  are  utterly  destroyed 
through  anarchy,  or  to  restrain  its  action  when  robbery 
and  murder  and  violence  and  crime  in  every  shape  prevail, 
but  tried  by  no  process  of  law  and  deterred  by  no  punish- 
ment; and  there  is  not  in  this  condition  the  maintenance 
of  the  commonwealth,  nor  can  it  claim  even  the  name. 
The  curse  of  impotence  would  be  upon  the  government  of 
a  people,  which  should  aid  or  abet  such  a  condition. 
There  would  be  the  failure  of  government  to  obtain  its 
primary  ends,  and  whatever  theory  of  civil  relations  was 
adduced  to  justify  it,  it  would  denote  the  imbecility  of  a 
people.  The  theory  would  be  a  theory  of  anarchy  and  not 
of  the  state.  The  government  restrained  from  its  end  in 
1  this  formalism  could  not  long  endure.  It  would  be  itself 

•  the  greater  criminal.     The  commonwealth  is  only  formal, 

•  and  the  subversion  of  the  civil  order  within  it  empties  it, 
and   there  remains  only  a  territory  and   an  unorganized 

<  population  among  the  vestiges  of  a  past  civil  system. 

The  nation  and  the  commonwealth,  in  the  coincidence 
of  the  civil  and  political  organization,  hold  certain  neces- 
sary powers,  which  are  involved  in  their  order  and  admin- 
|  istration.     These  are  the  concurrent  powers  of  the  consti- 


308  THE   NATION. 

tution.  Their  ultimate  ground  is  in  the  sovereignty  of 
the  people  in  its  organic  unity ;  but  they  are  necessary  to 
executive  action  alike  in  the  civil  and  the  political  sphere. 

The  illustration  of  these  powers  is  in  the  power  to  levy 
taxes,  and  the  power  to  call  out  and  employ  for  its  object 
physical  force.  But  the  power  of  taxation  in  the  common* 
wealth  is  strictly  internal,  and  the  force  it  calls  out  can 
act  in  its  immediate  direction  only  as  a  constabulary  for 
internal  order. 

The  principle  determinative  of  these  powers  is  implied 
in  the  nature  of  the  nation  and  the  commonwealth.  The 
power  in  the  commonwealth  is  subordinate  and  dependent. 
Kent  says,  "  Although  the  State  legislatures  have  a  con- 
current jurisdiction  in  the  case  of  taxation,  except  as  to 
imposts,  yet  in  effect  though  not  in  terms  this  concur- 
rent power  becomes  a  subordinate  and  dependent  one. 
In  any  other  case  of  legislation,  the  concurrent  power  in 
the  State  would  seem  to  be  entirely  dependent,"  etc.1 

The  distinction  in.  the  nation  and  the  commonwealth  be- 
comes more  apparent  in  those  powers  in  each,  which  have 
in  their  procedure  a  more  immediate  correspondence,  as 
the  judiciary.  The  distinct  nature  of  each  has  determined 
the  object  of  the  action  of  this  power  in  each,  while  the 
form  of  action  is  the  same.  It  is  thus,  in  the  words  of 
Kent,  that  "  the  judicial  power  of  the  United  States  is  nec- 
essarily limited  to  national  objects."  It  has  for  its  province 
the  application  in  cases  involving  a  conflict  of  rights,  of 
the  constitution  as  the  supreme  law,  and  of  the  acts  of 
Congress  as  laws,  and  it  is  to  give  judgment  in  cases 
which  arise  in  a  controversy  between  separate  common- 
wealths, and  when  action  is  brought  by  a  member  of 
one  commonwealth  against  another,  and  in  cases  arising 
in  the  external  sovereignty  of  the  nation  under  treaties 
and  in  revenue  or  admiralty  practice.  But  Kent  says,  of 
a  principle  which,  involved  in  the  necessary  conception  of 

1  1  Kent's  Comm.  p.  393. 


THE  NATION  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH.      309 

the  commonwealth,  has  struggled  toward  a  clearer  recog- 
nition, "  the  United  States  has  no  common-law  jurisdic- 
tion in  criminal  cases."  J  To  this  he  adds,  in  explication 
of  the  same  principle,  "  the  vast  field  of  the  law  of  prop- 
erty, the  very  extensive  head  of  equity  jurisdiction,  and 
the  principal  rights  and  duties  which  flow  from  our  civil 
and  domestic  relations,  fall  within  the  control,  and  we 
might  almost  say,  the  exclusive  cognizance  of  the  State 
governments."  * 

The  earlier  decisions  of  the  judiciary  of  the  United 
States  were  the  embodiment  of  a  profound  national  spirit, 
and  the  contrast  appears,  as  we  turn  from  the  weight  of 
their  decisions  to  the  bulk  of  the  later,  and  pass  from  their 
large  and  solid  conceptions  to  notions  which  only  obtain 
consistency  in  the  writings  of  Calhoun  and  Tucker's 
Blackstone.  There  was  in  these  earlier  decisions  a  con- 
ception of  the  being  of  the  nation,  which  the  nation  in  its 
progress  could  advance  in,  but  which  it  could  only  by  its 
retrogression  reject,  and  by  its  dissolution  obliterate. 
They  laid  the  foundations  in  which  the  people  can  build. 
The  precedents  which  they  established  apprehended  clearly 
the  substance  and  object  of  the  nation  and  the  common- 
wealth, and  they  embodied  in  a  massive  and  symmetric 
order  the  conception  to  which  the  masters  in  political 
science  had  sought  to  give  expression. 

The  relation  of  the  nation  and  the 'common wealth,  the 
international  and  the  civil  state,  is  fundamental.  It  is  only 
in  their  necessary  conception  that  this  relation  is  ascer- 
tained. It  is  only  in  their  substance  that  this  relation  is 
realized.  In  contrast  to  the  exposition  of  their  necessary 
relation,  which  has  its  premise  in  their  content,  there  are 
certain  theories  which  comprise  mainly  the  phases  which 
the  subject  has  assumed  in  abstract  speculations  and  legal 
presumptions.  These  theories  are  mainly  significant  in 
their  contrast  to  the  principle  which  has  been  established. 

1  1  Kent's  Comm.  pp.  367,  500. 


310  THE  NATION. 

Firstly ;  There  is  a  theory  in  which  the  States  are  repre- 
sented as  simply  vast  corporations  which  had  their  origin 
in  some  charter  or  patent,  and  continue  with  substantially 
the  same  privileges  and  prerogatives  once  vested  in  them. 
They  are  corporations  overgrown  with  time,  a  mass  of  un- 
defined forms  and  an  accumulation  of  interests,  but  in  con- 
formance  to  no  consistent  principle,  and  constructive  of  no 
consistent  order. 

But  in  immediate  answer  to  this  it  maybe  said,  —  Firstly; 
These  powers  are  not  thus  undefined  and  unlimited,  but 
exist  in  a  clear  limitation,  and  are  the  same  in  each  com- 
monwealth, and  are  part  of  the  same  order.  The  theory 
would  indicate  a  condition  which  ought  not  to  be  main- 
tained if  it  existed,  and  would  imply  the  social  disorder, 
not  the  organization  of  a  free  people.  The  theory  presents 
the  opposite  of  their  actual  condition.  Secondly  ;  It  is  not 
to  be  presumed  that  these  civil  states  could  continue  only 
as  vast  corporations,  whose  charters  had  lapsed,  and  which 
then  remained  with  these  positive  but  indefinite  and  mis- 
cellaneous powers.  There  is  no  country  that  could  exist 
in  the  confusion  that  this  would  involve,  and  the  civil  states 
could  not  occupy  the  place  which  they  have  with  no  other 
ground  or  content.  Thirdly ;  There  has  never  been  an 
historical  people  that  would  refer  its  whole  civil  system  to 
an  organization  which  had  no  other  character  than  this. 
To  entrust  the  security  of  civil  rights,  of  life  and  liberty 
and  property,  to  such  a  power  as  this  presents,  and  to  abide 
in  its  judgment  upon  them,  involves  that  which  no  people 
would  allow.  It  would  contradict  every  conception  of  civil 
order,  and  it  has  in  civil  society  no  parallel.  Governments 
in  every  form  have  been  imposed  upon  a  people,  but  no 
people  have  ever  conceded  to  an  organization  such  as  this 
assumes,  the  powers  existent  in  a  commonwealth  of  the 
United  States. 

Secondly  ;  There  is  a  theory  in  which  the  States  or  com- 
monwealths are  represented  as  separate  societies,  each  pos- 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  311 

sessed  of  the  sovereignty  and  independence  and  continu- 
ous being  of  a  separate  political  power ;  each  is  possessed 
of  the  highest  political  attributes ;  each  may  claim  the 
ultimate  obligation  of  all  its  members,  and  to  it  their  ulti- 
mate obedience  is  due ;  there  is  for  each  a  distinct  histori- 
cal place  and  destination,  and  each  has  immanent  in  itself 
all  the  capacities  of  an  international  power.  These  States 
are  connected  in  a  government  to  which  they  have  del- 
egated certain  powers,  expressed  in  a  written  contract, 
while  all  other  powers,  which  can  attach  to  the  most  un- 
limited conception  of  political  action,  remain  resident  in 
themselves.  The  government  established  through  this 
agreement  is  formed  as  their  common  bureau,  or  general 
agency,  for  certain  objects.  This  theory  was  the  postulate 
of  the  action  of  Calhoun  and  Davis  and  Stephens.  It  led 
the  former,  in  1831,  to  assert  the  right  in  each  State, 
within  its  own  limits,  to  nullify  any  act  of  the  national 
Congress  which  it  might  deem  unconstitutional  or  unjust, 
and  it  led  the  latter,  in  1861,  to  assert  the  right  in  each 
State  to  secede,  and  to  maintain  in  itself  a  sovereign,  inde- 
pendent and  continuous  existence. 

There  is  in  this  theory  the  explicit  assertion  of  a  confed- 
erate and  the  rejection  of  a  national  principle,  and  it  pre- 
sumes its  inconsistence  with  the  unity  and  being  of  the 
nation.  This  will  involve  a  separate  consideration.  But 
the  only  answer  to  this  theory,  which  is  beyond  all  contro- 
versy, and  is  that  of  the  realism  of  history,  is  that  the 
separate  commonwealths  have  no  realization  in  history  in 
conformance  to  this  conception.  The  right,  for  instance, 
which  in  history  is  the  crucial  test  of  political  sovereignty, 
the  right  to  enter  into  relations  with  other  nations,  and 
to  recognize  them  and  be  recognized  by  them,  has  never 
been  possessed  by  these  communities,  and  the  power  ap- 
parent in  the  inception  of  national  existence  is  wanting 
to  them.  The  theory  is  unreal ;  but  it  is  that  evil  theory 
which  apprehending  the  commonwealth  as  identical  with 


312  THE  NATION. 

the  political  people  and  apprehending  nothing  beyond,  had 
its  logical  sequence  in  the  subordination  of  the  whole  to  a 
special  interest,  and  consistently  assuming  slavery  as  that 
interest,  induced  the  effort  for  that  object,  to  effect  the 
destruction  of  the  whole.  The  events  of  history  in  the 
guidance  of  the  people  in  its  organic  and  moral  being,  are 
the  witness  to  that  unity,  the  rejection  of  which  is  blind- 
ness to  the  actual  life  and  relations  in  which  men  exist. 
This  assumption  of  a  political  contradiction  —  the  presence 
of  a  real  sovereignty  in  the  nation  and  also  in  the 
commonwealth  —  has  its  result  told  in  the  impassioned 
words :  — 

"  My  soul  aches 

To  know  when  two  authorities  are  up, 
Neither  supreme,  how  soon  confusion 
May  enter  'twixt  the  gap  of  both  and  take 
The  one  by  the  other."  1 

This  theory  sought  to  obtain  realization  in  the  articles  of 
the  confederation,  which  was  precedent  to  the  constitu- 
tion ;  but  these  articles  failed,  because  they  were  an  ab- 
straction and  had  no  correspondence  to  the  real  constitution 
of  the  people.  And  the  constitution  which  was  then  en- 
acted is  the  exponent  of  the  people  only  because  it  is  the 
supreme  law,  and  the  government  instituted  in  it  is  not 
one  of  separate  States,  but  it  is  ordained  and  established  by 
the  people,  and  represents  an  organic  relation  to  persons 
as  members  of  it ;  that  is,  it  is  the  constitution  of  a  nation. 
The  real  sovereignty  is  in  the  organic  people,  whose  will 
is  the  supreme  law ;  but  it  is  the  people  of  the  United 
States,  and  not  of  each  or  any  particular  State,  whose  will 
is  the  supreme  law.  And  sovereignty  exists  in  the  people 
in  its  organic  continuity ;  the  people  in  no  separate  State 
is  thus  formed,  but  the  citizens  of  one  State  are  the  citi- 
zens of  every  State,  and  since  a  state  cannot  exist  as  an 
abstraction,  it  follows  that  none  can  be  regarded  as  sepa- 
rate from  the  organic  whole. 

1  Coriolanus,  Act  3,  sc.  1. 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  313 

This  theory  had  its  consistent  representative  in  Mr. 
Calhoun,  who  avoided  none  of  its  necessary  conclusions  ; 
but  he  gave  no  conception  of  a  political  life  beyond  the 
commonwealth,  and  the  state  for  him  was  only  a  society 
existing  in  jural  relations,  and  composed  of  individuals 
related  to  it  as  private  persons,  and  having  for  its  end  the 
securance  of  private  interests  in  their  individual  or  col- 
lective character.  This  theory  is  beyond  consideration  in 
itself,  since  it  involves  conclusions  which  it  would  be  the 
unreason  of  things  to  "allow,  and  would  deny  the  conscious 
spirit  and  life  of  the  people,  the  organic  being  of  the  na- 
tion in  history.1 

Thirdly ;  There  is  a  theory  which  represents  the  people 
as  existent  as  an  organic  whole,  while  in  its  complex  polit- 
cal  organism  the  States  are  each  an  integral  and  original 
part.  The  sovereignty  is  in  the  organic  people,  while  in 
the  necessary  organization  of  the  people  the  States  are  in- 
tegral ;  or  in  other  words,  the  sovereignty  is  in  the  political 
people,  in  whose  real  political  constitution  the  States  are 
necessary.  This  is  the  position  of  Mr.  Brownson,  and  ap- 
parently of  Mr.  Hurd.  Mr.  Brownson  says,  "  the  sover- 
eignty is  in  the  States  united,  not  in  the  States  severally." 
Mr.  Hurd  says,  "  The  constitution  as  a  political  fact  is 
the  evidence  of  the  investiture  of  certain  sovereign  na- 
tional powers  in  the  united  people  of  the  States  antecedent 
to  the  constitution,  as  well  as  of  the  residue  of  sovereignty 

1  On  the  false  origin  of  civilization  in  the  conception  of  the  commonwealth  as 
separate  from  the  nation,  see  Maurice's  Prophets  and  Kings,  passim. 

"  The  commonwealth  presumes  the  nation  and  subsists  in  it.  When  the  state 
is  represented  as  only  a  union  of  various  individuals,  or  an  association,  it  is  only 
the  commonwealth  that  is  apprehended.  There  are  modern  publicists  who  hsive 
given  no  other  view  of  the  state."  —  Hegel,  Philosophic  des  Rechts,  p.  241. 
This  criticism  mainly  applies  to  the  view  of  the  state  in  an  empirical  school. 
It  is  given  in  the  writings  of  Mr.  Macaulay,  and  it  is  reiterated  in  the  political 
writings  of  Mr.  Mill,  and  the  political  conception  is  constantly  in  the  exclusive 
representation  of  the  commonwealth,  and  this  may  be  at  least  the  consistent 
ground  of  th»c  admiration  of  the  latter  for  the  political  specuk*i<?iw  V  Mr 
Calhoun. 


314  THE  NATION. 

in  the  same  people  in  their  several  condition  of  the  people 
of  distinct  States."  l 

This  theory  is  more  thorough,  and  may  claim  an  higher 
historical  consistence  than  either  of  the  preceding.  But 
it  is  defective  if  it  may  be  conceived  to  place  the  form  of 
the  state  above  the  life  of  the  state,  or  to  condition  the  life 
upon  the  form.  There  is  no  preconceived  political  form  to 
which  the  being  of  the  political  people  is  to  correspond. 
The  real  sovereignty  of  the  people  can  be  predetermined 
by  no  form,  but  it  is  itself  to  determine  the  form  of  its 
political  life.  The  fact  that  in  a  certain  period  it  acts  in  a 
certain  form  does  not  therefore  make  that  form  necessary 
to  its  being,  nor  forbid  that  it  may  be  changed.  And 
sovereignty  subsists  in  a  unity,  not  in  an  aggregate,  and  is 
existent  in  the  people  not  simply  as  a  territorial  people, 
although  it  is  in  the  people  of  the  land,  but  in  the  people 
as  organic  and  moral.  There  is  also  a  formal  sovereignty, 
and  the  exercise  of  certain  powers  necessary  to  its  normal 
executive  action,  that  is,  vested  powers,  in  the  common- 
wealth, and  it  is  because  the  organic  people  forming  the 
nation  has  a  real  sovereignty  that  the  powers  existent  in  the 
commonwealth  cannot  be  wholly  beyond  its  recall,  or  utterly 
detached  from  it,  as  would  follow,  for  instance,  in  the  seces- 
sion of  a  commonwealth.  And  if,  as  this  theory  implies, 
the  existence  of  the  several  civil  States  is  necessary  in  the 
realization  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  organic  whole,  then  the 
acts  performed  and  the  laws  enacted  in  the  interval  of  the 
action  of  each  and  all  might  be  reversed  or  annulled,  as 
transpiring  in  some  interregnum  and  void  of  sovereignty. 
And  the  order  of  the  separate  commonwealths  is  formal, 
and  in  the  supreme  necessity  of  the  organic  people  they 
may  be  merged  and  remerged  into  each  other.  The  na- 
tion is  not  conditioned  upon  the  existence  and  continuance 
of  the  separate  civil  States  in  their  extant  form.  It  could 

i  Brownson,  The  American  Republic,  p.  220.    Kurd,  Law  of  Freedom,  etc.,  vol 
i.  p.  408. 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  315 

exist  through  one  as  through  another  political  form,  and 
even  while  all  the  commonwealths  included  in  it  were 
changed.  It  has  not  the  condition  of  its  being  in  any  form, 
nor  its  limitation  in  an  external  order.1 

But  there  is  in  none  of  these  schemes  the  exposition  of 
the  nature  and  relation  of  the  commonwealth  and  the  na- 
tion. The  realization  of  the  commonwealth  and  the  nation 
in  conformance  to  their  necessary  conception,  —  the  com- 
monwealth as  the  civil  organism,  subsistent  only  in  the 
nation,  and  in  its  formal  order  invested  with  a  formal  sove- 
reignty, but  with  the  ample  sphere  of  the  civil  organiza- 
tion, in  which  individuals  have  the  institution  of  their  pri- 
vate relations;  and  the  nation,  as  the  moral  organism,  the 
being  of  the  organic  people  in  its  freedom; — the  result  in 
this  is  before  and  beyond  any  theories  or  any  formulas. 
In  the  realization  of  history  it  cannot  be  changed  by  them 
so  as  to  be  made  as  if  it  were  not,  but  in  their  prevalence 
its  development  may  be  disturbed  or  detained. 

The  premise  of  the  distinction  in  the  nation  and  the 
commonwealth  —  the  United  States  and  a  particular  State, 
—  has  been  assumed  in  certain  propositions  which  claim  a 
separate  notice. 

Mr.  Calhoun  defines  the  principle  on  which  the  distinc- 
tion is  based,  "  The  division  of  the  powers  of  the  govern- 
ment was  effected  by  leaving  subject  to  the  control  of  the 
several  States,  all  powers,  which  it  was  believed  they  could 
advantageously  exercise,  without  incurring  the  hazard  cf 
bringing  them  in  conflict,  and  by  delegating  others  specifi- 
cally to  the  United  States."  2  This  is  the  application  of  a 

1  Hurd,  Law  of  Freedom,  etc.,  vol.  i.  pp.  400-415.  Mr.  Hurd's  exposition  of 
the  historical  course  of  the  state  is  indeed  masterly;  and  one  caonot  avoid 
regret  that  the  writer,  who  has  shown  the  widest  political  learning  and  the  finest 
freedom  of  thought  of  any  American  publicist,  should  have  been  led  to  and 
through  this  long  compilation  of  laws  on  slavery.  It  only  indicates  in  how  many 
ways  the  system  has  been  the  source  of  loss  to  us. 

»  Calhoun  s  Works,  vol.  ii.  p.  420. 


316  THE  NATION. 

mere  empiricism,  which  proceeds  only  on  the  principle  of 
an  avoidance  of  conflict.  It  is  for  the  keeping  of  the 
peace  between  the  separate  commonwealths.  It  presents 
the  commonwealth  as  the  integral  and  original  power,  and 
the  government  of  the  whole  is  not  ordained  and  established 
by  the  organic  people  in  its  sovereignty,  but  constituted  by 
the  delegation  of  certain  powers  of  and  from  the  several 
States ;  and  it  again  illustrates  the  fact  that  Mr.  Calhoun 
apprehended  nothing  beyond  the  commonwealth.  It  is 
also  the  assumption  of  only  a  negative  principle,  the  avoid- 
ance of  the  risk  of  conflict,  and  therefore  cannot  become 
the  ground  of  a  positive  order,  nor  constructive  of  any- 
thing. It  prescribes  also  only  the  form  of  the  common- 
wealth, and  the  principle  in  which  the  powers  of  the  whole 
are  left  to  be  determined  is  not  given,  but  they  are  merely 
represented  as  "  others."  In  the  principle  assumed,  more- 
over, instead  of  escaping  the  hazard  of  conflict,  in  its  polit- 
ical conception  it  has  become  the  inevitable  source  of  con- 
flict, and  has  borne  in  itself  the  elements  of  dissolution  to 
the  whole. 

The  distinction  is  often  represented  as  that  of  a  central 
government  and  a  self-government,  meaning  by  the  latter 
simply  a  local  administration.  But  this  is  obviously  de- 
fective, since  the  distinction  is  not  one  of  government  and 
administration.  There  is  government  and  administration 
alike  in  the  parts  and  in  the  whole.  There  are  in  the 
nation  necessarily  immediate  administrative  powers,  and 
these  affect  every  individual  in  the  whole,  and  there  is  a 
central  government  and  strictly  central  system,  as  of  a 
wheel  within  a  wheel,  in  the  civil  organization.  There  is 
indeed  in  the  commonwealth  the  administration  of  its 
order,  or  a  local  administration,  but  this  distinction  fails 
to  ascertain  the  principle  in  which  its  order  consists.  The 
work  of  De  Tocqueville,  so  profound  in  its  apprehension 
of  the  thought  of  another  people,  the  gift  of  a  citizen  of 
France  to  the  United  States,  has  illustrated  the  worth  of  a 


THE  NATION  AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  317 

central  government  and  local  administration,  or  a  self- 
government  in  the  meaning  of  the  local  administration  of 
local  affairs ;  but  there  has  been  beneath  this  the  develop- 
ment of  a  far  grander  and  more  complex  order. 

There  is  in  the  writings  of  Mr.  Choate  a  significant  il- 
lustration of  the  principle  which  has  been  ascertained.  In 
endeavoring  to  sustain  the  separate  political  sovereignty  of 
the  separate  States,  when  he  defines  the  powers  existent  in 
the  commonwealth  he  says,  "  one  of  the  prerogatives  of 
sovereignty  —  the  prerogative  to  take  life  and  liberty  for 
crime, — is  theirs  without  dispute."  l  It  is  indicative  of  the 
principle  in  their  distinction,  that  on  the  assumption  of 
their  sovereign  powers  this  only  can  be  cited  without  dis- 
pute which  is  itself  not  strictly,  in  the  conception  which 
has  been  ascertained,  the  act  of  political  sovereignty,  but 
belongs  to  the  commonwealth  in  its  formal  sovereignty, 
and  is  necessary  to  its  executive  action  as  the  civil  system 
in  the  nation. 

There  is  an  apparent  objection  to  this  principle  in  a 
declaratory  statement  of  the  constitution  describing  powers 
as  reserved  to  the  States,  or  to  the  people.  But  this,  while 
not  in  immediate  variance  with  this  distinction,  has  no 
immediate  application.  The  constitution  asserts  in  the 
amplest  measure  national  powers,  and  prohibits  powers 
to  the  commonwealth.  The  powers  are  not  reserved  by 
the  States  to  themselves,  since  inasmuch  as  the  States 
did  not  grant  powers,  they  could  reserve  none;  and  the 
power  asserting  itself,  is  of  the  people,  whose  will  is  alone 
the  supreme  law  over  the  whole.  The  phrase  also,  "  the 
States,"  while  it  is  represented  as  identical  with  the 
people,  by  a  common  principle  of  interpretation  in  law, 
must  be  explained  as  congruous  with  the  same  term  in  the 
preceding  sentences  of  the  legal  document  in  which  it 
appears. 

1  Choate's  Work*,  vol.  i.  p.  197. 


318  THE  NATION. 

The  importance  of  the  definite  consideration  of  the  dis- 
tinction of  the  nation  and  the  commonwealth  constantly 
appears.  A  senator  said  of  the  Civil  Rights  Bill,  that  it 
opened  "  a  new  epoch  in  the  legislation  of  America ;  "  and 
while  that  great  bill  had  its  constructive  principle  in  the 
immanence  of  the  nation  in  the  commonwealth,  and  the 
nation  is  to  maintain  not  the  pretense  of  civil  order,  but 
the  commonwealth  in  its  reality  organized  in  the  unity 
of  the  nation,  yet  whatever  should  tend  to  bring  the  nation 
to  assume  in  itself  the  immediate  sphere  of  the  common- 
wealth and  its  permanent  retention,  would  involve  the 
most  grave  disaster.  It  might,  as  in  the  institution  of  an 
imperialism,  secure  a  more  perfect  civil  order  for  a  certain 
period,  but  it  would  not  continue  long.  In  its  close  it 
would  be  destructive  of  the  noblest  civil  and  political  order 
that  society  has  yet  attained. 

The  clearer  recognition  of  this  distinction  is  the  con- 
dition of  the  higher  development  of  the  commonwealth 
itself.  There  can  be  but  an  imperfect  advance  while  its 
nature  is  undefined  and  its  province  is  undetermined.  Its 
object  must  be  clearly  apprehended.  There  devolves  upon 
it,  says  Kent,  "  the  duty  that  its  jurisprudence  be  culti- 
vated, cherished,  and  exalted,"  and  this,  while  not  strictly 
comprehensive  of  it,  indicates  its  immediate  design.  The 
legislature  has  not  in  the  civil  organization  the  relative 
position  and  precedence  which  it  has  in  the  political  body. 
The  best  elements  of  stability  in  the  commonwealth  of 
Pennsylvania,  have  been  in  the  withdrawal  of  that  which 
was  not  clearly  to  be  referred  to  the  legislature  and  its 
reference  to  the  courts.  The  securance  of  civil  rights  is 
the  immediate  act  of  the  judiciary,  and  it  is  vain  to  divide 
its  responsibility,  or  to  construct  a  power  to  act  in  its  stead, 
or  to  merge  its  offices  or  functions  with  those  of  the  legis- 
lature. If  it  becomes  weak  or  corrupt,  the  only  remedy  is 
its  reconstruction  in  the  commonwealth,  and  not  the  ac- 
cumulation of  its  powers  in  the  legislature. 


THE  NATION   AND   THE   COMMONWEALTH.  319 

As  the  commonwealth  is  formed  in  the  jural  relations  of 
society,  the  common  law,  through  the  common  working  of 
many  commonwealths  in  a  political  whole,  may  have  before 
it  in  their  varied  process  an  higher  attainment.  Its  aim 
is  to  be  the  administration  of  justice.  The  better  civil 
order  is  in  the  higher  manifestation  of  justice,  and  the 
clearer  assertion  of  the  nature  and  doom  of  crime.  Pun- 
ishment is  to  be  made  inevitable  as  the  manifestation  of 
crime.  Justice  is  imperative,  and  perfect  justice  alone 
truly  imperial.  There  are  false  theories  of  conscience 
and  crime  which  make  the  one  a  mere  negation,  and  the 
other  only  an  imperfect  stage  of  development,  and  hold  the 
conflict  of  good  and  evil  as  a  neutral  field ;  and  there  is  a 
necessitarianism  in  which  there  is  the  denial  of  the  reality 
of  crime,  and  there  is  a  humanitarianism  which  is  con- 
sistent with  no  just  and  holy  conception  of  the  origin  or 
the  destination  of  humanity,  which  are  undermining  the 
order  of  society,  and  converting  into  a  poor  pretense  its 
most  awful  institutions.  There  is  the  demand  for  a  more 
manifest  justice.  It  is  a  day  of  evil  for  a  people,  when  it 
comes  to  regard  the  punishment  of  crime  only  as  the 
sequence  in  some  legal  formula,  or  determined  in  some 
social  contract  or  some  law  of  expediency,  and  when  its 
statesmen  lose  all  consciousness  of  a  divine  obligation,  that 
crime  must  be  punished,  and  wicked  men  must  meet  the 
consequence  of  their  deeds.  This  is  the  end  in  the  com- 
monwealth, and  in  its  failure  to  realize  this  it  is  separated 
iTom  its  ground  in  the  nation,  and  its  organization  no 
longer  corresponds  to  its  end. 

There  has  been  in  the  historical  course  of  the  United 
States  the  higher  development  of  the  civil  and  political 
organization  of  society,  —  the  commonwealth  and  the  na- 
tion. Their  sequence  is  not  the  mere  accident  of  history, 
nor  the  induction  of  an  arbitrary  theory,  nor  the  assump- 
tion of  a  legal  formula;  but  k  has  been  justified  in  the 


320  THE  NATION. 

reason  of  the  state.  It  is  an  organization  ampler  and 
nobler  than  they  who  in  the  generations  have  builded  in  it, 
could  wholly  comprehend ;  and  working  steadily  and  faith- 
ftdly  in  their  own  day,  they  have  wrought  m  the  ages, 
building  better  than  they  knew.  It  has  been  vindicated 
in  political  science  in  the  pages  of  its  few  masters.  It  fills 
the  almost  prophetic  conception  of  Milton,  —  "  not  many 
sovereignties  united  in  one  commonwealth,  but  many  com- 
monwealths in  one  united  and  intrusted  sovereignty." 

The  commonwealth  is  poor  and  empty,  as  are  all  things 
else,  in  seeking  to  be  something  other  than  itself.  When 
it  assumes  a  national  place  and  national  relations,  it  is 
severed  from  its  consistent  strength  and  its  symmetric 
order,  and  is  weak  in  the  assumption  of  unreal  powers. 
It  becomes  the  caricature  of  the  state,  moving  with  a  de- 
ceptive pomp  in  a  disastrous  pageant.  In  the  building  of 
a  false  civilization,  in  the  accumulation  of  merely  material 
interests,  it  bears  with  it  the  ruin  of  a  people.  The  family 
has  its  own  place,  and  the  commonwealth  has  its  own  dig- 
nity ;  but  the  worth  of  each  is  in  the  fulfillment  of  its  own 
law.  And  if  the  commonwealth,  instead  of  its  maintenance 
in  the  unity  of  the  nation  in  which  its  interests  alone  have 
a  moral  ground,  and  are  formed  in  the  spirit  of  a  moral 
interest,  is  broken  and  dissevered  from  it,  it  is  when  ma- 
terial possessions  are  counted  as  beyond  freedom,  and  gold 
is  more  precious  than  humanity,  —  the  golden  wedge  of 
Ophir  more  precious  than  a  man. 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

THE    NATION    THE    ANTAGONIST    OF    THE    CONFEDERACY. 

THE  nation  and  the  confederacy  represent  the  forces  in 
conflict  in  human  society. 

The  nation  in  its  organic  and  moral  being  hi  history 
may  recognize  other  nations,  and  may  enter  into  certain 
relations  and  assume  certain  obligations  with  them ;  it  may 
form  an  alliance  or  join  in  a  league  with  them,  for  certain 
objects  defined,  for  instance  by  a  treaty  between  them ; 
but  each  is  subsistent  in  itself,  and  the  convention  which 
they  form  obtains  its  only  force  from  the  sovereignty  of 
each  persisting  in  it,  and  is  conditioned  upon  their  contin- 
uance, and  expires  with  its  own  limitation  or  with  their 
retirement.  But  this  presumes  the  existence  and  affects 
only  the  powers  and  obligations  of  separate  nations.1  It 
is  apart  from  the  principle  of  confederatism. 

The  confederacy  is  the  construction  of  society  in  its  own 
exclusive  type.  It  defines  the  origin  of  society  in  the  vol- 
untary action  of  certain  separate  parties,  and  it  is  formed  in 
their  contract ;  its  powers  proceed  from  the  contract  of 
those  who  are  associated  as  private  persons  in  it,  and  the 
authority  of  its  government  is  derivative  from  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  articles  of  this  contract.  The  formation  of 
society  is  artificial,  and  the  government  and  order  of  the 
world  are  of  human  contrivance,  —  certain  expedients  for 
the  accomplishment  of  secular  and  separate  ends.  The 

1  A  principle  of  politics  of  increasing  strength  in  this  age  is  "  freedom  from 
alliances,"  and  this  is  indicative  not  only  of  changes  in  the  character  and  rela- 
tion of  nations,  but  of  the  stronger  personal  life  of  the  nation.  There  was  this 
consciousness  of  freedom  in  the  advice  of  the^fathers  of  the  republic,  as  in  the 
words  of  President  Washington,  "  avoid  all  entangling  alliances." 
21 


322  THE  NATION. 

state  is  the  exclusive  possession  of  those  who  have  con- 
structed it ;  its  government  is  their  agent ;  its  justice  the 
scheme  of  their  legislators ;  its  freedom  the  resultant  con- 
sequent from  the  exchange  conducted  on  the  entrance  to 
it;  and  each  is  limited  to  the  proprietors  who  are  joint  par- 
ties in  it.  The  end  of  society  is  the  securance  and  fur- 
therance of  private  interests ;  its  order  is  the  balance  of 
these  interests;  its  government  is  the  representation  of 
these  interests ;  its  primary  and  exclusive  function  is  their 
protection. 

The  confederacy  may  be  defined  as  the  combination  of 
separate  individuals  or  societies  who  enter  into  a  volun- 
tary agreement,  and  in  the  arrangement  which  they  have 
formed  there  is  the  source  of  government ;  the  limita- 
tion of  its  action  is  with  the  several  parties,  and  in  the  ex- 
press terms  of  their  arrangement,  that  is,  it  is  the  origin 
and  institution  of  society  in  conformance  to  the  civil  con- 
tract. The  highest  principle  in  it  is  not  the  institution  of 
justice  which  is  in  itself  before  all  legislation,  and  is  not 
created  by  it ;  nor  the  organization  of  rights  which  it  may 
recognize  but  cannot  bestow,  nor  the  realization  of  free- 
dom which  although  posited  in  an  external  order  is  of  the 
spirit  of  man,  and  can  no  more  be  conferred  by  the  lawyer 
than  by  the  preacher  or  prelate  or  king,  but  it  is  the  law 
of  combination  after  which  it  is  constructed.  The  confed- 
eracy has  been  called  by  its  historian,  "  the  most  polished 
and  the  most  artificial  production  of  human  ingenuity," 
and  defined  as  a  system  in  which  each  party,  "  as  an  inde- 
pendent and  sovereign  power,  and  as  in  itself  absolute, 
enters  into  a  compact  with  others."1  Montesquieu,  while 
regarding  its  primary  object  as  security,  which  is  assumed 
as  belonging  to  it  in  a  greater  degree,  describes  it  as  "  an 
assemblage  of  societies  which  is  to  arrive  at  such  a  degree 
of  power  as  to  provide  for  the  security  of  the  whole."  * 

1  Freeman's  Histwy  of  Federal  Governmental,  i.  p.  6. 

2  Montesquieu's  Spirit  of  Laws,  bk.  ix.  ch.  i. 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  CONFEDERACY.   323 

The  end  is  here  only  that  of  the  commonwealth  with 
which  the  state  is  identified.  In  the  period  in  which  Mon- 
tesquieu wrote,  it  was  presented  as  a  formal  system,  —  a 
precedent  to  oppose  the  formal  system  which  identified  the 
state  with  the  prince,  and  in  the  conflict  with  the  legal 
assumptions  of  feudalism,  the  social  contract  had  a  value 
while  maintained  as  a  legal  fiction. 

The  formal  constitution  of  a  people  in  some  period  of 
transition  —  as  in  an  early  stage  of  political  development, 
or  a  later  stage  of  political  degeneracy,  —  may  take  the 
shape  of  a  summary  of  articles  in  conformance  to  a  confed- 
erate system,  but  its  characteristic  is  always  the  lack  of 
permanence.  If  the  people  exist  in  the  unity  of  a  con- 
scious and  organic  life,  and  in  the  continuity  of  an  integral 
power  in  history,  it  is  set  aside  as  not  representing  the 
reality,  and  in  the  development  of  the  people  in  its  na- 
tional being,  with  which  it  cannot  consist,  it  is  necessarily 
rejected ;  or  if  through  the  ascendency  of  a  selfish  power 
the  unity  of  the  nation  is  broken  by  it,  there  is  in  the  lapse 
into  the  confederacy  only  the  evidence  in  its  external  con- 
dition of  that  which  has  been  wrought  within  in  its  moral 
dissolution. 

The  confederate  is  the  immediate  antithesis  to  the 
national  principle,  as  the  confederacy  is  the  necessary 
antagonist  to  the  nation  in  history.  This  antithesis  be- 
comes apparent  in  every  aspect  in  which  they  may  be 
regarded.  The  nation,  as  the  organism  of  human  society, 
presumes  an  organic  unity ;  and  its  being,  as  organic,  is 
that  which  no  man  can  impart.  The  confederacy  assumes 
the  existence  of  society  as  artificial,  as  formed  through  an 
association  of  men  in  a  certain  copartnership  of  interests, 
and  as  only  the  aggregate  of  those  who,  before  living  sep- 
arately, voluntarily  entered  it.  The  nation  is  formed  in 
the  development  of  the  historical  life  of  the  people  in  its 
unity  ;  the  confederacy  is  a  temporary  arrangement  which 
is  formed  in  the  pursuance  of  certain  separate  and  secular 


324  THE  NATION. 

ends.  The  nation  in  its  necessary  being  can  have  its  ori- 
gin only  in  the  divine  will,  and  its  realization  only  in  that. 
The  confederacy  assumes  the  origin  of  society  in  the  vol- 
untary act  of  those  who  separately  or  collectively  enter  it, 
and  its  institution  has  only  this  formal  precedent.  The 
nation  is  constituted  in  a  vocation  in  history,  and  therefore 
has  its  own  purpose  and  work ;  and  of  this  it  cannot  divest 
itself,  as  if  it  was  an  external  thing,  nor  alienate,  nor  trans- 
fer it  to  another.  The  confederacy  is  the  device  of  a  tran- 
sient expediency,  and  in  conformance  to  certain  abstract  or 
legal  notions,  or  formulas,  as  the  exposition  of  a  scheme. 
The  nation  exists  as  a  relationship,  as  it  is  in  and  through 
relations  that  personality  is  realized ;  and  it  can  neither 
have  its  origin  in,  nor  consist  with,  a  mere  individualism. 
The  confederacy  comports  only  with  an  extreme  individ- 
ualism,—  the  association  of  private  persons,  the  accumu- 
lation of  special  interests,  to  be  terminated  when  these  may 
dictate  or  suggest.  The  nation  exists  in  an  organic  and 
moral  relation  to  its  members,  and  between  the  nation  and 
the  individual  no  power  of  earth  can  intervene.  The 
confederacy  is  only  a  formal  bond,  and  the  individual  has 
no  more,  in  the  state,  an  end  in  correspondence  to  his 
moral  being ;  and  it  is  thus  that  the  word  confederate  has 
become  stamped  with  a  certain  moral  reprobation.  The 
nation  exists  in  its  unity  in  the  divine  guidance  of  the 
people.  The  confederacy  allows  only  the  formal  unity 
which  is  created  in  the  conjunction  of  certain  men  or 
associations  of  men. 

Their  antithesis  appears  the  more  obvious,  the  more 
intimately  they  are  regarded.  The  confederacy  assumes 
only  the  aggregation  of  separate  parties,  as  individuals  or 
societies,  but  allows  no  principle  in  which  a  real  unity  may 
consist,  nor  the  continuity  in  history  of  the  generations  of 
men.  It  is  a  formal  order  whose  condition  is  a  temporary 
expediency,  and  its  limitation  is  defined  in  that,  and  not  in 
the  conditions  of  an  organic  and  moral  being.  It  is  not 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  CONFEDERACY.   325 

the  guidance  of  the  people  in  its  vocation,  in  the  realiza- 
tion of  its  being  in  history,  but  its  structure  is  framed  after 
its  own  device,  and  out  of  the  material  which  it  has  heaped 
together.  It  builds  of  its  own  brick  and  mortar  —  which 
it  has  accumulated,  —  what  it  alone  can  build,  although  its 
brick  be  as  venerable  as  that  upon  which  Mr.  Carlyle  has 
pronounced  his  political  eulogium,  building  after  its  own 
schemes  in  the  structure  of  society  a  Babel,  and  the  result, 
which  is  not  only  a  recurrent  fact  but  a  moral  necessity,  is 
that  the  work  fails  of  all  permanence  in  history,  and  the 
builders  are  driven  away,  or  if  it  be  preferred,  they  go 
away  with  confusion  and  division. 

The  antithesis  which  appears  in  the  national  and  con- 
federate principle  has  its  manifestation  in  history.  The 
confederate  principle  in  its  necessary  sequence  can  bring 
only  division,  and  unity  and  order  are  established  only  in 
the  same  measure  in  which  it  is  overcome.  The  security, 
which  it  has  made  its  single  aim,  it  has  failed  to  obtain  ; 
and  in  the  furtherance  of  private  and  special  interests  it 
has  been  rent  and  broken  by  them.  The  pages  of  history 
contain  everywhere  the  record  of  its  disaster.  The  illus- 
tration of  its  course  and  its  consequence  appears  —  as  in 
these  lands  also  it  had  its  widest  construction  —  in  Greece 
and  in  Germany.  The  termination  of  the  history  of  Greece 
is  abrupt,  as  if  the  sudden  and  violent  issue  of  crime.  It 
was  as  the  confederate  spirit  came  to  prevail,  in  the  divis- 
ion of  her.  separate  communities,  and  in  the  exclusive  as- 
sumptions and  supremacies  of  these  communities,  in  the 
precedence  of  Athenian,  and  Spartan,  and  Theban,  and 
Macedonian  power,  that  the  strength,  which  in  its  unity  of 
spirit  had  triumphed  over  the  multitudes  of  Asia,  was  lost ; 
and  in  the  dissension  of  these  communities,  which  preferred 
alliance  with  a  foreign  power,  so  entirely  was  the  national 
purpose  effaced,  and  in  the  rivalries  and  jealousies  of  private 
ambition  and  devotion  to  private  ends,  the  life  of  Greece 
was  destroyed.  The  only  union  sought  or  allowed  was  in 


32t)  THE  NATION. 

that  fatal  device,  a  balance  of  power,  which  was  always 
irregular  and  disturbed,  while  separate  communities  with 
their  separate  interests  alternately  contended  for  the  su- 
premacy. The  disease  in  the  members  could  be  overcome 
by  no  organific  force  working  in  the  whole,  for  this  was 
prevented  by  the  assumption  of  a  merely  formal  relation. 
Then  followed  a  succession  of  internal  wars,  interrupted 
only  by  transient  intervals  of  peace.  The  greater  power 
of  the  confederate  principle  was  then  also  in  those  com- 
munities, where  a  system  of  slavery  predominated,  as  in 
Sparta ;  while  in  Athens  there  remained  until  the  close  the 
memories  and  hopes  of  a  national  life.  This  has  left  its  ex- 
pression in  some  of  the  noblest  political  conceptions  in  lit- 
erature. And  still  it  is  in  Athens  that  the  national  life  of 
Greece  is  slowly  reillumined.  But  the  issue  of  the  con- 
federacy was  a  disaster  from  which  none  were  exempt. 
The  citizens  of  Athens  themselves  were  disfranchised. 
The  separate  communities  sank  into  the  condition  of  Ro- 
man provinces,  and  the  ruin  involved  the  whole,  and  the 
subjection  of  the  whole  to  a  foreign  power.  The  termina- 
tion of  the  drama  has  been  fitly  represented  by  the  his- 
torian, when  the  last  great  patriotic  statesman  of  Greece 
went  alone  into  the  temple  of  Poseidon,  to  hail  and  wel- 
come death.  The  most  complete  recent  illustration  of 
this  principle  is  in  the  German  Confederation.  The  as- 
sumption of  the  rights  of  sovereignty  by  petty  states  and 
municipalities,  each  with  its  claim  to  independence  and 
legitimacy,  divided  the  people,  and  in  its  resultant  weak- 
ness left  it  through  centuries  the  ally  or  the  subject  to 
some  imperial  power.  The  mockery  of  the  power  of  a 
great  people  was  in  the  construction  of  the  German  Bund. 
It  was  the  prop  of  weak  and  pretentious  sovereignties  — 
mere  lords  of  division  at  home  and  agents  of  imperial  pow- 
ers abroad.  It  led  the  people  across  every  frontier  as  the 
antagonist  of  nations ;  and  France,  and  Italy,  and  Den- 
mark, in  turn,  have  felt  its  assault.  It  could  not  protect 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST   OF   THE   CONFEDERACY.      327 

the  people  from  domestic  tyranny,  nor  avert  foreign  in- 
vasion. In  the  most  immediate  danger  to  the  people  it 
could  not  act ;  while  the  Turks  were  before  Vienna,  Diet 
after  Diet  was  held,  but  no  common  action  followed. 
There  are  none  of  the  great  highways  of  Germany  over 
which  her  own  soldiers  have  not  been  compelled  to  march 
as  the  ally  of  a  foreign  power,  and  none  of  her  capitals 
over  which  they  have  not  aided  to  hoist  a  foreign  flag. 
It  is  only  after  long  humiliation  that  there  comes  the 
dawning  of  the  unity  and  freedom  of  the  German  nation. 
There  is  alike  in  ancient  and  modern  history,  the  evidence 
how  deadly  a  foe  the  confederate  spirit  has  been;  how 
close  its  alliance  has  been  with  slavery  and  with  the  pre- 
dominance of  every  selfish  interest;  how,  through  the 
division  and  resultant  weakness  of  the  people,  it  has 
opened  the  way  to  foreign  supremacy  and  to  imperialism, 
and  how  long  has  been  the  battle  which  the  nation  has 
had  to  fight. 

The  nation  attains  the  realization  of  its  sovereignty  and 
its  freedom  only  as  it  strives  to  overcome  this  false  princi- 
ple, and  yet  as  its  root  is  in  a  selfish  tendency  it  is  only 
at  last  overcome  in  the  close  of  the  conflict  of  history. 
The  confederacy  in  itself  has  no  permanence,  but  the  evil 
principle,  the  bite  of  the  serpent,  remains,  and  in  some 
sudden  moment  it  may  rise  and  strike  at  the  life  of  the 
nation.  With  the  people  of  the  United  States  the  conflict 
of  the  nation  and  the  confederacy  passed  through  a  long 
period  of  years,  until  the  character  of  the  principle  and 
purpose  in  each  was  to  become  manifest,  and  they  were  to 
meet  face  to  face,  and  over  a  continent  from  its  centre  to 
fhe  sea  their  armies  were  to  be  gathered,  and  in  a  struggle 
cf  life  and  death,  not  only  for  those  who  are,  but  for  those 
who  shall  be,  the  issue  was  to  come  forth  in  the  judgment 
of  Him,  with  whom  are  the  issues  of  eternal  conflicts. 

On  the  postulate  of  a  confederate  principle,  it  was  assumed 
that  the  people  constitute  a  confederate  association  of  sep- 


828  THE   NATION. 

arate  political  societies,  that  each  of  these  is  sovereign,  and 
each  has  a  separate,  integral  and  continuous  existence, 
being  associated  with  the  others  in  a  formal  agreement  for 
certain  denned  ends  and  the  securance  of  certain  interests ; 
and  that  from  this  joint  agreement  expressed  in  the  stipula- 
tions of  certain  articles  formed  by  each  as  a  party  with  the 
others,  there  is  derived  the  authority  of  the  government 
and  the  powers  of  the  people.  The  inference  in  logic,  and 
the  result  in  fact,  was  the  attempted  secession  of  one  or 
several  of  these  societies,  when  any  deemed  that  it  was 
justified  to  itself  in  the  exejcise  of  its  sovereignty,  and  in 
the  consequent  maintenance  of  its  continuous  existence,  — 
in  necessary  coincidence  with  the  extinction  of  the  organi- 
zation of  the  whole,  which  was  regarded  as  only  formal,  and 
in  which  the  separate  societies  were  combined.  There  was 
assumed  for  each  a  sovereign  and  continuous  existence, 
and  an  ultimate  authority  over  its  population,  who  were 
primarily  constituted  as  the  citizens  of  each  society,  and 
each  could  be  conceived  to  exist  without  the  others  ;  but 
the  relation  of  the  people  in  and  of  the  whole  was  formal, 
and  it  could  not  be  conceived  apart  from  the  separate  soci- 
eties upon  whose  existence  in  their  independence  and  sove- 
reignty and  continuous  existence  it  was  thus  conditioned. 

There  has  been  in  the  history  of  no  people  the  witness 
to  a  higher  unity.  The  divine  guidance  of  the  people  has 
nowhere  had  ampler  evidence,  and  in  the  consciousness  of 
the  people  it  has  been  held  in  a  purpose  transmitted  from 
the  fathers  to  the  children,  in  the  faith  of  succeeding  gen- 
erations. The  unity  of  the  people  has  been  moulded  in 
the  unity  of  a  history  so  perfect,  that  apart  from  it  the  suc- 
cession of  events  is  a  discord  and  not  a  development.  If  this 
unity  be  denied,  the  history  holds  no  significance,  and  the 
people  have  acted  with  so  long  toil  and  sacrifice  in  a  false 
masque,  —  a  poor  but  fatal  comedy  of  errors. 

The  foundations  were  to  be  laid  in  a  new  world,  not  in 
the  age  of  imperialism,  when  the  Roman  empire  was  the 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  CONFEDERACY.   329 

central  power  in  the  world,  nor  in  the  age  of  medievalism, 
when  the  power  in  the  same  centre  was  transferred  to 
papal  ecclesiasticism,  hut  in  the  age  of  the  coming  of  the 
life  of  nations.  It  was  the  age  of  national  development. 
Its  gates  were  opened  in  the  age  of  that  protestantism 
which  was  formed  in  the  struggle  and  endeavor  of  nations, 
against  a  universal  domination  whose  capital  was  Rome. 
It  was  the  national  age  of  England,  the  age  of  her  high- 
est development,  the  age  also  of  Shakespeare,  and  Raleigh, 
and  Bacon,  and  Milton ;  in  this  age  there  was  the  begin- 
ning of  the  positive  development  in  the  history  of  the 
American  people.  There  was  the  inception  of  the  his- 
torical unity  and  historical  life  of  America. 

The  people,  in  the  colonial  period,  was  formed  under  one 
government  —  that  of  Great  Britain;  and  all  were  con- 
stituted under  one  sovereignty,  as  they  were  comprehended 
in  one  colonial  system.  Through  the  years  preceding  the 
War  of  Independence,  the  colonies,  which  were  the  planta- 
tions of  Great  Britain,  were  in  an  integral  relation  to  one 
power,  and  subject  to  one  authority.  The  government 
of  Great  Britain  was  over  and  inclusive  of  the  whole. 
The  formal  investiture  of  the  colonies  with  certain  sove- 
reign powers,  was  confined  mainly  to  the  administrative 
powers,  which  are  necessary  in  the  organization  of  civil 
society,  that  is,  the  order  of  the  commonwealth. 

From  England  the  people  was  to  inherit  those  elements 
which  consist  with  a  common  relation.  There  were  only 
those  forces,  which  tend  to  the  community  of  men,  and 
there  was  mingled  with  them  no  element  of  variance. 

o 

There  was  an  inheritance  of  one  language  and  one  lit- 
erature, and  common  manners  and  arts  and  laws. 

The  War  of  Independence,  while  it  cannot  be  strictly 
called  a  revolution,  was  in  the  development  in  its  unity  of 
the  people  planted  here,  and  here  to  unfold  its  life.  The 
separation  from  Great  Britain  was  a  single  political  act ; 
it  was  the  act  of  the  whole  people,  and  involved  the  as- 


330  THE  NATION. 

sumption  by  the  whole  of  the  sovereignty,  which  before 
was  asserted  over  the  whole  by  Great  Britain.1  It  was 
occasioned  by  the  same  single  course  of  events.  The  peo- 
ple had  been  subject  through  their  lives  to  the  same  for- 
tunes. Its  complaint  was  of  the  same  grievances,  and 
it  had  suffered  the  same  wrongs  and  endured  the  same 
humiliation.  There  was  the  same  purpose  animating  the 
whole,  and  it  advanced  toward  the  same  end.  The  period 
of  colonial  dependence  was  succeeded  by  the  independence 
of  the  whole. 

The  action  of  the  people  was  naturally,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, through  the  existent  social  forms,  but  it  was  none 
the  less  the  action  of  the  whole  people.  The  people  acted 
necessarily  in  the  organizations  in  which  it  stood,  —  as  the 
town  meeting,  the  county,  the  municipality,  the  common- 
wealth, —  and  its  action  must  have  been  through  these 
forms,  unless  all  forms  were  obliterated  in  some  social  de- 
vastation ;  but  this  action  through  the  extant  forms  in  this 
transition,  instead  of  being  conclusive  of  the  separate  po- 
litical sovereignty  and  continuity  of  each  community  as  an 
integral  political  power,  when  considered  in  its  political 
aspects,  is  wholly  inconsistent  with  it.  2 


1  "  The  association  of  the  American  people  took  place  while  they  were  colonies 
of  the  British  empire,  and  owed  allegiance  to  the  British  crown."  —  1  Kent's 
Comm.  201. 

2  De  Tocqueville  inferred  that  the  people  and  freemen  of  each  township  con- 
stitute the  political  integer,  and  that  its  existence  is  independent  of  the  collec- 
tive people  of  the  commonwealth.  —  Democracy  in  America,  vol.  i.  pp.  40,  67,  68. 
Mr.   Bancroft  maintains  the  same  position.  —  History,  vol.  ii.  pp.  59,  60.     See 
also  Kurd's  Law  of  Freedom,  etc.,  vol.  i.  p.  405.    "  These  views  have  been  ex- 
pressed by  them  without  sufficient  reflection  or  examination,  and  are  not  correct 
in  principle,  nor  sustained  by  our  colonial  records,  nor  by  any  adjudication  of  our 
courts." — Butler,  J.,  in  Webster  v.  Harrington,  32  Connecticut  R.  136.   The  as- 
sumption of  the  town  meeting  as  the  integral  political  power,  or  the  political  mo- 
nad, is  described  as  the  merest  fiction,  and  as  destitute  of  foundation  in  both  fact 
and  law,  and  this  is  illustrated  by  a  wide  survey  of  evidence.    The  argument  is 
conclusive  against  the  integral  political  character  of  the  township  ;  but  there  is 
more  apparently  to  justify  the  inference  of  M.  De  Tocqueville  and  Mr.  Ban- 
croft, that  the  integral  political  power  is  resident  in  the  township,  than  may  be 
cited  to  maintain  the  same  claim  for  the  commonwealth. 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  CONFEDERACY.   331 

There  '  is  in  its  continuance  the  unfolding  of  a  still 
grander  and  more  imposing  unity.  The  War  of  Indepen- 
dence, with  its  years  of  suffering  and  devotion  and  sacri- 
fice, was  the  war  of  one  people.  It  was  fought  from  its 
opening  to  its  close  before  the  inception  of  the  Constitution, 
and  with  no  formal  constitution,  but  they  "  stood  all  to- 
gether, and  they  marched  all  together."  They  went  forth 
to  battle  under  one  leader,  and  under  him  they  won  a 
common  victory.  The  power  of  the  whole  was  instituted 
in  one  Congress.  The  language  it  used  in  its  official  acts, 
spoke  of  "  country  and  America."  The  names  which  the 
political  power  assumed,  were  the  "Continental  Congress" 
and  "  Continental  Army  "  and  "  Continental  money."  The 
name  "  United  America"  was  often  repeated.  The  rela- 
tion toward  other  political  powers  was  that  always  of  one 
people  forming  a  nation,  and  the  recognition  by  other  na- 
tions was  not  of  each  community  as  a  separate  political 
power,  but  it  was  the  recognition  of  the  people  as  one  na- 
tion. It  was  the  organic  people  forming  a  nation  that  sent 
forth  its  ministers,  and  with  it  treaties  were  made  and 
international  relations  were  established.  Thus  its  ministers 
were  received  by  France  as  the  ministers  of  the  United 
States,  and  at -the  conclusion  of  the  treaty  made  between 
the  two  governments  in  1778,  the  King  of  France  spoke 
to  its  ministers  of  "  the  two  nations."  The  authority  as- 
serted was  of  the  whole  people,  and  the  delegates  in  the 
Revolutionary  Congress  proclaimed  its  power  "in  the  name 
and  by  the  authority  of  THE  GOOD  PEOPLE  of  these  colo- 
nies." The  Declaration  of  Independence  was  the  act  of 
the  whole  people  ;  it  calls  the  Americans  one  people,  and 
its  salutation  is  to  them  as  fellow  citizens.  There  is  in 
it  the  assumption  of  no  separate  rights,  and  the  record 
of  no  separate  wrongs.  The  Declaration  in  its  conception 
transcends  the  spirit  of  any  of  these  separate  communities, 
and  was  beyond  their  separate  grasp.  It  was  by  the  whole 
people  that  the  war  was  carriefl  on,  and  victory  was  won, 


332  THE  NATION. 

and  peace  was  established  for  the  people.  There  was  hi 
these  events  beyond  argument  the  evidence  of  the  divine 
guidance  of  the  people.  And  the  witness  to  this  provi- 
dential guidance  of  the  people  in  the  realization  of  the 
nation,  was  to  be  given  by  one  whose  words  are  more  than 
those  of  an  isolated  individual.  President  Washington 
said,  in  his  first  inaugural  to  the  people,  "  Every  step  by 
which  they  have  advanced  to  the  character  of  an  indepen- 
dent nation,  seems  to  have  been  distinguished  by  some 
token  of  providential  agency." 

The  subsequent  circumstance  of  the  deepest  significance 
is  that  the  people  sought  to  realize  its  purpose  under  the 
articles  of  a  confederation.  It  was  the  assumption  of  a 
confederate  principle,  although  in  the  nature  of  things  it 
induced  inevitable  contradictions;  thus,  while  the  separ- 
ate States  are  represented  as  sovereign,  they  are  not  so  ID 
reality,  but  the  attributes  of  political  sovereignty  are  with- 
drawn from  them ;  then  also  the  articles  are  called  the 
Articles  of  Confederation,  but  they  are  also  described  as 
articles  of  perpetual  union  ;  the  acts  which  were  then  per- 
formed under  the  articles  were  incongruous  with  a  con- 
federate conception,  and  thus  the  Congress  of  the  people 
proceeded  to  enact  laws  as  if  invested  with  positive  pow- 
ers, and  thus  the  great  seal  of  the  United  States  with  its 
legend  of  unity  was  adopted ;  and  treaties  were  con- 
firmed by  the  Congress,  in  which  the  nation  was  bound  by 
obligations  to  other  nations,  and  the  whole  people  was 
held  by  them ;  under  these  articles  also,  —  so  far  was 
the  condition  removed  from  an  actual  sovereignty  in  the 
separate  communities,  —  in  the  highest  issues,  and  those 
which  involved  the  very  being  of  the  people,  the  ulti- 
mate determination  was  with  nine  of  the  thirteen  com- 
munities, and  this  formal  political  action  was  imperative 
over  the  whole.  But  the  fact  of  the  most  enduring  import 
is  that  these  articles  of  confederation  had  no  continuance ; 
but  after  a  very  brief  period  of  confusion  and  disaster  they 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  CONFEDERACY.   333 

fell  away,  partly  through  their  inherent  weakness,  and 
partly  because  they  did  not  correspond  to  the  real  consti- 
tution, and  could  not  embody  the  real  spirit  and  purpose 
of  the  people.1 

There  was  formed  by  the  people  a  national  constitution. 
It  was  ordained  and  established  by  the  people,  and  in 
the  institution  of  a  national  government,  "  We  the  people 
of  the  United  States,  —  for  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica." It  is  called  "  the  Constitution,"  and  not,  as  before, 
"  the  Articles,"  as  in  a  compact.  The  end  which  it  places 
before  it  is  a  national  object,  —  "to  provide  for  the  com- 
mon defense,  to  promote  the  general  welfare,  to  secure  the 
blessings  of  liberty  to  ourselves  and  our  posterity."  The 
ordination  of  the  government  is  in  a  national  legislature, 
whose  laws  are  authority  for  the  whole  land ;  and  a  na- 
tional judiciary,  to  which  is  referred  the  subject  and  ad- 
ministration of  public  law,  and  before  which  the  separate 
communities  in  a  conflict  of  rights  appear  by  summons  or 
appeal ;  and  a  national  executive  vested  in  one  person  in 
the  unity  of  the  personality  of  the  nation.  It  is  the 
enumeration  of  national  rights  and  of  national  powers.  It 
is  ignorant  of  and  indifferent  to  the  very  names,  and  the 
number  and  the  extent  of  the  separate  civil  communities 
comprehended  in  it. 

The  illustration  of  this  history  is  in  the  necessary  polit- 
ical development  of  the  people.  The  formal  argument  in 
every  phase  admits  no  other  conclusion,  as  in  its  course 
there  can  be  traced  no  divergent  event. 

1  President  Madison  says  of  the  character  of  the  confederation,  after  describing 
the  Amphictyonic  and  Achaean  leagues,  which  he  represents  as  in  analogy  with 
it,  "  The  inevitable  result  of  all  was  imbecility  in  the  government,  discord  among 
the  provinces,  foreign  influences  and  indignities,  a  precarious  existence  in  peace, 
and  peculiar  calamities  in  war."  —  The  Federalist,  No.  xx. 

President  Washington,  who  held  the  conception  of  the  organic  and  moral 
being  of  the  nation  with  a  more  profound  sincerity  and  grasp  of  thought  than 
any  American  statesman  —  certainly  before  President  Lincoln  —  wrote  to 
John  Jay,  March  10,  1787,  of :  "a  thirst  for  power,  and  the  bantling  —  I  had 
liked  to  have  said  —  the  monster  sovereignty,  which  has  taken  such  fast  hold  of 
the  States  individually." 


334  THE  NATION. 

Firstly,  The  separate  societies  or  commonwealths  have 
each  of  itself  no  integral  historical  life,  and  there  is  no 
separate  historical  aim  which  may  be  apprehended  in  them. 
The  whole  historical  development  is  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  and  upon  the  people  its  work  has  been 
laid.  Apart  from  the  people  of  the  United  States,  and 
apart  from  a  relation  in  and  to  that,  history  is  ignorant 
of  these  separate  communities.  They  have  no  separate 
ground  in  history. 

Secondly,  The  object  and  end  toward  which  the  people 
has  moved,  has  been  the  realization  of  a  common  end,  and 
that  the  end  of  the  being  of  the  nation,  the  realization  of 
freedom.  The  aim  has  been  to  place  beyond  all  aggression 
the  inalienable  right  of  personality,  the  freedom  of  con- 
science and  of  thought,  and  to  embody  in  more  enduring 
institutions  the  rights  of  man  ;  and  this  in  the  course  of 
the  people  has  been  increasingly  apparent.  The  end  was 
not  the  false  and  negative  conception  of  what  is  called 
freedom,  which  was  to  exist  only  in  their  relative  indepen- 
dence in  respect  to  each  other,  a  freedom  of  alienation  and 
division,  but  there  was  the  unity  of  a  moral  aim,  and  for 
this  the  toil  and  conflict  and  sacrifice  of  years  have  been 
offered  and  this  has  been  given  to  the  people.  The 
immortal  words  in  which  Washington  was  called  by  the 
Continental  Congress  to  the  head  of  the  Continental  Army 
were,  "  to  command  all  forces  raised  or  to  be  raised  for  the 
defense  of  American  liberty." 

Thirdly,  The  societies,  with  the  interval  of  a  brief  and 
most  significant  period  of  transition,  have  existed  under  a 
positive  national  constitution.  It  is  a  constitution  which 
proceeds  from  the  political  people  in  its  unity.  The  su- 
preme law  is  the  assertion  necessarily  in  its  organic  char- 
acter of  the  sovereign  political  power.  The  constitution  is 
the  supreme  law.  The  names  of  the  separate  societies  are 
unknown  to  it,  and  there  is  no  recognition  of  a  separate 
sovereignty,  and  no  assumption  of  a  divided  sovereignty. 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  CONFEDERACY.   335 

The  words  are  not  in  it,  and  it  is  only  a  school  which 
claims  the  specious  pretense  of  a  literal  construction,  that 
reads  of  State  sovereignties  between  the  lines.  The  form 
in  which  the  change  or  amendment  of  the  Constitution  may 
be  effected,  precludes  a  separate  sovereignty  in  the  separate 
communities.  While  it  can  only  be  effected  in  a  form  which 
is  established,  yet  the  act  is  ultimate  and  the  whole  is  sub- 
ject to  it,  but  no  sovereignty  can  consist  with  this  ultimate 
subjection,  whether  the  conclusion  in  its  procedure  be 
determined  as  a  political  act,  by  a  political  majority  of  one, 
or  of  two  thirds. 

Fourthly,  The  physical  power,  the  organized  might  of 
the  people,  is  formed  by  and  in  obedience  to  the  authority 
of  the  people  as  a  whole.  It  is  organized  as  a  national 
power.  And  as  war  is  the  act  of  the  nation  in  its  en- 
tirety, it  is  also  beyond  the  capacity  of  a  separate  society 
to  declare  war  or  to  conclude  peace.  The  military  oath, 
which  every  officer  registers,  is,  "  That  he  owes  faith  and 
true  allegiance  to  the  United  States,  and  agrees  to  main- 
tain its  freedom,  sovereignty,  and  independence." 

Fifthly,  The  separate  societies  have  no  existence  each  as 
a  separate  society  in  international  relations.  The  capacity 
to  recognize  other  nations,  and  to  be  recognized  by  them, 
to  form  treaties  and  enter  into  the  relations  defined  by 
international  law  with  them,  is  the  note  or  the  crucial  test 
of  the  sovereignty  of  a  political  people,  and  in  its  formal 
and  external  relations  a  positive  test,  but  there  is  for  this 
action  no  capacity  in  the  separate  societies,  and  this  power 
has  no  existence  in  them. 

Sixthly,  There  have  been  certain  of  these  societies,  cor- 
respondent in  every  actual  capacity,  and  in  their  character 
and  organization  to  the  other  communities,  and  invested 
with  all  their  powers  and  immunities,  which  have  been 
constituted  by  the  nation,  that  is,  by  the  people  as  a  whole. 
This  is  the  condition  of  an  increasing  number  of  them. 
They  have  been  formed  by  the*  formal  act  and  enactment 


THE   NATION. 

of  the  nation,  and  to  assume  for  these  an  original  and  in- 
dependent existence,  and  an  actual  sovereignty,  is  a  contra- 
diction. It  places  the  created  above  the  creator. 

Seventhly,  These  societies  are  so  constituted  that  citizen- 
ship exists  in  all  its  rights  and  powers  in  the  whole,  and 
the  citizens  of  the  United  States  are  the  citizens  of  every 
State.  It  is  one  political  body,  to  which  the  members  are 
individually  related.  There  is  no  expatriation  on  passing 
from  one  society  to  another  ;  and  no  naturalization  is  requi- 
site in  the  change  from  one  section  to  another,  and  there  is 
in  no  separate  society  the  power  for  such  action.  But  to 
apprehend  a  State  as  existent,  apart  from  the  people  com- 
prehended in  it,  is  an  abstraction,  and  can  appear  only  in 
the  vision  of  political  speculations. 

Eighthly,  The  separate  societies  have  not  the  constituent 
elements  of  political  power.  The  rights  which  appear  in  a 
national  sovereignty  and  the  correspondent  powers,  are  not 
possessed  by  them.  They  have  not  separately  the  capaci- 
ties of  an  independent  political  people.  Their  construction 
is  in  a  civil  system,  and  they  are  without  the  conditions  of 
integral  political  supremacy.  Whatever  may  be  the  infer- 
ence of  speculations  and  the  course  of  legal  hypotheses,  this 
is  the  fact  of  their  condition. 

Ninthly,  They  have  no  external  relation  apart  from  the 
United  States.  It  is  the  latter  alone  which  is  manifest  in 
an  external  sovereignty.  They  are  constituted  in  a  form 
necessary  to  internal  order  and  administration,  and  have 
none  of  the  indices  of  power  in  which  a  nation  appears  in 
its  external  sovereignty,  maintaining  its  own  relations,  and 
acknowledging  on  earth  no  external  control  beyond  itself. 

Tenthly,  The  separate  societies  have  not  the  physical 
unity  which  appears  in  the  being  of  an  independent  nation. 
They  have  in  their  existence  no  conformance  to  its  geo- 
graphical law.  They  are  defined  by  no  natural  and  no 
historical  boundaries,  but  every  natural  and  historical 
boundary  is  erased  in  their  interrelation.  There  are  none 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST   OF   THE    CONFEDERACY.      337 


of  those  lines  that  demark  the  existence  of  a  separate 
people  on  the  earth.  In  the  collision  of  events,  and  the 
conflict  and  migration  of  races,  and  the  crush  of  the  forces 
of  history,  which  are  mightier  in  their  duration  than  those 
of  physical  nature,  if  a  separate  existence  was  assumed 
they  would  become  in  the  first  shock  so  changed  as  to  lose 
their  identity,  and  history  could  not  recognize  them. 

But  while  the  argument  in  its  conclusion  allows  no  di- 
gression, and  has  in  the  records  of  scarcely  any  years  in 
the  existence  of  a  people,  a  parallel  in  height  and  full- 
ness, yet  an  argument  is  only  illustrative,  and  in  the 
presence  of  the  being  of  the  people,  and  in  the  realization 
of  history,  there  is  presumption  in  any  argument.  The 
evidence  is  in  the  being  of  the  people,  and  from  its  con- 
scious unity  there  is  no  appeal,  and  it  allows  no  inquiry. 
If  there  be  not  the  consciousness  of  the  unity  and  sove- 
reignty and  freedom  which  subsist  in  the  organic  being  of 
the  people,  then  all  argument  is  empty,  and  all  inquiry  is 
vain.  The  realization  of  history  can  be  determined  by  no 
political  abstractions,  and  events  conform  to  no  individual 
preconceptions.  Facts  do  not  defer  to  theories  ;  in  the 
strong  image  of  the  poet,  "  words  are  men's  daughters, 
but  God's  sons  are  things." 

The  principle  in  which  the  character  and  relation  of  the 
separate  civil  societies  are  defined,  whatever  its  form,  nec- 
essarily affects  the  foundation  of  society,  and  is  constructive 
of  its  whole  process.  If  there  be  assumed  for  each  a 
necessary  and  continuous  existence,  then  each  is  a  self- 
subsistent  power,  and  then  .the  bond  which  holds  them  as 
collective,  that  is,  as  a  combination  of  certain  separate 
and  self-subsistent  societies,  is  formal,  and  the  principle 
in  which  their  relation  is  formed  must  be  necessarily  the 
confederate  principle.  To  maintain  then  the  continuous 
union  of  each  with  all,  and  to  compel  each  to  persist  con- 
tinuously in  connection  with  another  or  with  all  in  this 
formal  relation,  would  not  only  be  destructive  of  the  sove- 


338  THE  NATION. 

reignty  and  independence  presumed  in  each,  but  when 
this  compulsion  was  made  against  its  clearly  and  persist- 
ently expressed  intent,  it  would  become  the  institution  of 
human  society  in  force.  It  would  involve  in  human  society 
the  maintenance  through  physical  force  of  a  formal  order, 
and  not  the  existence  of  an  integral  or  organic  and  moral 
being. 

The  principle  which  is  the  necessary  postulate  of  the 
confederacy  has  been  denned  clearly,  and  has  been  held 
strenuously.  There  was  nothing  vague  in  the  attempt  at 
secession,  nor  in  the  premise  on  which  it  proceeded.  It 
was  the  assumption  of  the  sovereignty  and  independence 
and  continuous  existence  of  each  separate  community,  and 
the  act  of  secession  was  the  necessary  sequence  as  each  or 
any  deemed  itself  justified  to  itself  by  the  grievance  it  bore, 
or  by  the  advantage  it  was  to  secure.  The  secessionists 
regarded  themselves  primarily  as  the  citizens  of  these  sep- 
arate communities,  and  subject  to  the  ultimate  authority 
of  each,  and  became  confederate  in  and  for  the  protection 
and  furtherance  of  a  special  interest,  which  was  assumed 
as  the  immediate  object. 

The  confederate  principle  which  was  manifest  in  the 
denial  of  the  organic  and  moral  being  of  the  nation,  could 
appear  only  as  a  destructive  force.  It  had  its  necessary 
sequence,  as  it  sought  its  realization,  in  an  attempt  at 
the  dissolution  of  the  whole. 

The  conflict  of  the  confederate  principle  with  the  nation 
has  been  borne  on  through  all  the  years  of  the  people. 
There  are  memorials  and  declarations,  and  enactments  and 
proclamations,  and  judicial  decisions  and  state  papers, 
which  are  framed  in  conformance  to  the  scheme  of  a  con- 
federacy, or  formed  in  the  realization  of  the  being  of  the 
nation.1  And  still  in  the  devices  of  parties  and  the  expe- 

1  There  is  a  force  often  imputed  to  some  textual  statement,  in  which  it  is  so 
construed  as  to  compel  historjr,  and  thus  a  notion  or  dogma  counter  to  all  reality 
may  be  built  upon  some  political  memorial,  as  the  phrase  or  a  state  paper. 
There  is  an  illustration  of  this  in  the  speculations  of  Mr.  Calhoun.  An  article 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  CONFEDERACY.   339 

dients  of  priests,  and  the  forms  of  legists  and  the  opinions 
of  jurists,  the  conflict  appears.  The  construction  of  gov- 
ernment has  sometimes  been  conceived  to  exist  in  a  com- 
promise, but  the  fact  has  been  their  inevitable  conflict. 
As  in  their  conception  each  involves  the  negation  of  the 
other,  there  has  been  in  history  their  incessant  antagonism. 
As  the  nation  is  formed  in  its  unity  in  the  will  of  God  in 
history,  and  is  manifest  in  the  divine  guidance  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  advances  in  its  continuity  in  the  transmission  of 
its  purpose  from  the  fathers  to  the  children,  in  the  fulfill- 
ment of  the  vocation  of  the  whole  people,  and  exists  in  the 
realization  in  its  organic  and  moral  being  of  a  moral  order 
in  history,  so  the  confederacy  denies  the  unity  and  con- 

of  the  Confederation  reads,  "  each  State  retains  its  sovereignty,  freedom  and 
independence,  and  every  power,  etc.,"  and  thus  it  is  assumed  as  the  reality  in 
history  that  each  State  or  society  possessed  a  real  sovereignty  and  independence, 
and  all  the  political  powers  involved  in  a  sovereign  and  independent  political 
being.  There  is  then  maintained  in  strict  consistency  and  as  the  immediate 
inference  of  this  postulate,  the  necessary  and  continuous  existence  of  each  State 
or  society  as  a  political  power,  and  having  all  political  powers  immanent  in  the 
political  body.  It  is  on  the  phrase  of  a  state  document  that  the  whole  fabric  is 
constructed,  and  for  all  time.  —  See  Calhoun's  Works,  vol.  i.  p.  148.  The  original 
sovereignty  is  not  the  creation  of  a  legal  formula,  since  it  is  itself  the  power  which 
can  affirm  its  will  as  law,  and  thus  in  France,  for  instance,  at  one  period,  the 
most  various  constitutions,  each  having  the  authority  of  law,  succeeded  each 
other;  but  it  is  not  presumed  that  the  actual  condition  changed  with  each  state 
document,  that  appeared,  as  it  was  said,  so  rapidly  as  to  form  a  periodical  lit- 
erature. 

Mr.  Hurd  says,  "  Declaring  a  state  of  things  does  not  make  it.  Since  no  dec- 
laration of  sovereignty  can  be  more  than  evidence,  it  may  as  such  be  compared 
with  other  testimony.  The  declaration  of  July  4th  asserted  the  colonies  to  be 
'free  and  independent  states'  The  accompanying  declarations  of  an  existing 
condition  of  private  persons  that  'all  men  are  created  equal,  etc.,'  all  men  have 
4  inalienable  rights,'  did  not  determine  any  private  conditions,  even  though 
the  state  of  private  persons  is  the  effect,  and  not  like  sovereignty,  the  cause 
of  law."  —  Law  of  Freedom,  etc.,  vol.  i.  p.  407. 

"  The  possession  of  sovereignty,  being  a  fact  and  not  an  effect  of  law,  what  • 
ever  written  memorials  of  the  rightfulness  of  any  national  sovereignty  may 
exist,  they  can  only  proceed  from  itself,  and  they  can  only  be  taken  as  historical 
evidences  of  its  existence ;  not  as  law  controlling  that  possession  of  sovereign 
power  which  they  assert.  And  the  authors  of  these  declarations  must  always 
be  supposed  to  have  the  right  to  substitute  others  of  different  term  and  of  equal 
juridical  authority.  There  can  therefore  be  no  written  constitution  of  govern- 
ment so  authoritative  in  its  nature  or  its  expression  as  to  determine  the  rightful 
sovereignty,  the  rightful  holders  of  thaf  rightful  supreme  power."  —  Ibid,  vol 
i.  p.  396. 


340  THE  NATION. 

tinuity  in  the  being  of  the  organic  people,  and  assumes 
the  origin  and  foundation  of  society  in  the  convention  of 
men,  and  its  construction  in  the  combination  of  separate 
interests,  and  its  continuance  in  the  dictation  of  interests  , 
it  is  conditioned  in  the  law  of  a  temporary  expediency, 
and  as  a  power  in  the  exclusive  possession  of  a  class  or  oi 
a  race,  and  for  the  furtherance  of  separate  and  specia 
ends. 

It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  the  War  was  not 
primarily  between  freedom  and  slavery.  It  was  the  war 
of  the  nation  and  the  confederacy. 

The  nation  and  the  confederacy  meet  at  last  in  mortal 
conflict.  It  is  the  battle  of  the  nation  for  life.  Confedera- 
tism,  in  its  attack  upon  the  nation,  is  in  league  with  hell. 
It  severs  the  children  from  the  fathers.  It  erases  the 
sacred  memories  which  are  their  common  heritage.  It 
passes  over  violated  oaths.  It  rejects  a  law  of  righteous- 
ness in  the  realization  of  society.  It  denies  the  divine 
origin  of  humanity,  and  the  sacred  rights  it  bears  in  its 
divine  image.  It  refuse's  the  foundation  of  its  unity  in  the 
corner-stone,  which  is  the  "foundation  which  is  lying." 
It  forms  its  alliance  with  slavery,  and  that  dam  got 
its  brood.  It  gathers  to  itself  the  pride,  the  treachery 
and  infidelity  of  men,  the  worship  of  money,  the  vulgarity 
of  fashion,  and  the  distinction  of  caste.  It  collects  its  sup- 
porters out  of  all  parties  and  factions  and  churches  and 
sects.  It  is  the  conflict  of  history,  the  battle  of  Judaea  with 
Babylon,  which  sweeps  through  all  the  centuries.  In  its 
awful  significance,  it  can  find  but  an  imperfect  expression 
in  the  symbols  of  human  thought.  It  is  but  faintly  imaged 
in  the  fight  of  the  eagle  and  the  serpent.  It  may  never 
wholly  cease  until  the  end  of  history.  The  confederacy  is 
the  embodiment  of  the  evil  spirit,  in  which  there  is  the 
destruction  of  the  being  of  the  nation,  the  organic  and 
moral  unity  and  continuity  of  society,  and  the  subversion  of 
the  whole  to  selfish  ends.  It  strives  to  subvert  the  nation 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  CONFEDERACY.   341 

to  serve  its  end  in  the  perpetuance  of  slavery,  or  the  pride 
of  birth,  or  hatred  of  race.  It  turns  from  defeat  on  the 
field  to  cheat  men  with  its  lies  and  its  frauds.  It  retreats 
slowly  from  every  hold.  There  is  no  people  but  has  felt 
the  poison  of  its  fangs,  and  none  but  has  been  deceived  and 
seduced  by  its  sorceries.  The  nation  in  the  realization  of 
its  being  has  always  to  contend  with  it,  and  in  the  sub- 
jection or  the  resistance  to  it  is  the  sign  of  weakness  or 
of  power.  The  nation  is  to  bear  the  conflict  to  the  close 
of  history,  as  it  is  to  strive  for  the  realization  in  its  moral 
fulfillment  of  the  life  of  humanity,  to  which  every  advance 
in  its  history  will  call  it,  and  of  which  every  new  age  may 
be  the  revelation,  as  the  days  of  the  Son  of  Man. 

In  every  age  the  character  and  result  of  the  conflict  be- 
comes more  clear,  as  its  issue  is  revealed  in  the  judgment 
of  history.  It  is  not  alone  the  conflict  of  ideas,  for  it  is  in 
another  than  an  intellectual  arena,  and  reaches  the  very 
passion  and  contradiction  of  life.  It  is  not  alone  the  con- 
flict of  freedom  and  slavery,  excepting  only  as  freedom  is 
realized  in  the  realization  of  the  being  of  the  nation,  and 
slavery,  as  divisive  or  destructive,  is  to  be  overcome  by  it. 
It  is  the  nation  contending  for  its  unity,  which  is  in  God, 
and  for  its  continuity,  in  which  the  generations  from  the 
fathers  to  the  children  bear  its  holy  purpose,  and  for  the 
fulfillment  in  humanity  of  a  law  of  righteousness.  The 
nation  was  battling  for  her  very  being,  as  she  rose  to  vic- 
tory, from  the  fields  of  Vicksburg  and  Gettysburg  arid 
Atlanta,  and  the  lines  before  Richmond. 


CHAPTER    XVIII. 

THE    NATION    THE    ANTAGONIST    OF    THE    EMPIRE. 

THE  nation  has  its  immediate  antithesis  in  the  empire. 
The  nation  is  formed  in  the  freedom  of  the  people,  as  an 
organic  whole,  and  it  comprehends  the  whole  in  its  action 
and  end  as  a  moral  organism ;  the  law  of  the  empire,  or 
the  imperial  principle,  is  the  formation  of  the  order  of 
society  in  the  subjection  of  the  whole  to  an  individual  or 
a  separate  collection  of  individuals. 

In  the  empire,  there  is  strictly  the  realization  of  the 
freedom  of  only  one  or  a  few.  The  will  of  the  people 
has  no  expression  in  it,  and  there  is  substituted  in  its  stead 
the  will  of  an  individual,  or  a  class,  to  whom  alone  action  is 
allowed.  The  government  is  not  of  the  people,  but  apart 
from  the  people.  They  are  the  subjects  of  it,  but  are  not 
participants  in  it,  and  have  no  place  in  its  positive  deter- 
mination. The  empire  allows  no  real  expression  to  the 
will  of  the  people,  but  only  to  an  individual  or  a  family  or 
a  class.  Thus  its  government  becomes  repressive,  and 
tends  to  efface  the  conscious  life  and  spirit  of  the  people. 

The  nation  is  in  identity  with  the  people,  but  the  empire 
identifies  an  individual  or  a  class,  with  the  political  body. 
Its  language  is  always  in  the  phrase  of  Louis  XIV.  The 
ruler  is  not  regarded  simply  as  a  member  of  the  political 
body,  but  is  himself  the  state.  There  is  no  law  and  no 
power  beyond  his  individual  authority;  there  is  no  voice 
except  his  individual  proclamation,  and  no  rights  beyond 
his  individual  rights.  The  public  good  is  not  the  imme- 
iiate  aim,  and  the  common  welfare  is  not  an  object  in  itself, 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  EMPIRE.   343 

nor  the  well  being  of  the  people  the  end  of  the  whole, 
except  only  as  it  goes  well  with  him. 

The  government  of  the  empire  is  not  in  the  will  of  the 
organic  people,  expressed  through  the  organic  powers  of 
the  political  body,  but  the  sole  authority  is  the  private 
judgment  and  the  executive  act  of  the  imperator.  It  is  a 
necessary  absolutism,  and  the  law  of  the  empire  is  con- 
cluded in  the  Roman  aphorism,  quod  Principi  placuit,  legis 
habet  vigorem. 

The  empire  may  conform  to  the  physical  being  of  the 
state,  and  has  the  conditions  of  an  external  order,  but  not 
of  the  development  of  the  nation  as  a  moral  order.  There 
is  the  action  only  of  an  imperial  will,  and  its  process  is  an 
imperial  edict.  There  is  in  the  people  no  evocation  of  a 
moral  spirit,  and  no  education  of  an  individual  character 
in  them.  The  capacity  of  each  is  not  called  forth,  and  his 
powers  are  not  awakened ;  he  is  in  no  immediate  relation 
to  the  state;  he  does  not  act  in  the  determination  of  its 
course ;  he  cannot  realize  in  it  his  own  purpose,  nor  strive 
for  the  embodiment  in  it  of  his  moral  aim.  The  life  of 
the  state  is  withdrawn  from  him,  and  its  conduct  is  secret 
from  him ;  he  cannot  comprehend  it,  as  in  his  individual 
existence  he  is  not  comprehended  by  it.  There  is  thus 
no  development  of  the  individual  personality,  no  moral  life 
and  spirit  in  the  people.  This  appears  in  China,  which  is 
perhaps  in  all  its  aspects  the  most  complete  illustration  of 
the  empire.  In  China,  says  Hegel,  "  the  ground  of 
moral  action  is  entirely  obliterated.  Such  is  the  fearful 
condition  of  things  in  regard  to  responsibility  and  non- 
responsibility  ;  all  subjective  freedom  and  moral  account- 
ability and  concernment  in  an  action  is  lost  sight  of."  * 
The  consequence  is  seen  in  the  subversion  of  moral  re- 
sponsibility. In  its  criminal  code  there  is  no  individual 

1  Hegel,  Philosophic  der  Geschichte,  p.  156. 

"  Die  autokratie  wird  allerdings  ausgeschlossen,  durch  die  Representative 
verfassung,  und  durch  den  Begriff  des  Staats  selbst." — RoChe,  Theologischt 
Ethik,  vol.  ii.  p.  126. 


344  THE  NATION. 

accountability  recognized  for  crime,  and  there  is  a  confu- 
sion of  the  moral  judgment  and  indifference  to  moral  dis- 
tinctions. In  its  civil  system,  punishment  is  not  neces- 
sarily imposed  upon  offenders,  but  is  a  formal  satisfaction 
of  the  law.  Thus  for  instance,  one  who  has  committed  a 
crime  to  which  the  penalty  of  death  is  affixed,  and  is  con- 
demned, may,  and  with  slight  expense  almost  always  can 
find  one  who  will  suffer  the  penalty  in  his  stead,  and  the 
law  is  then  satisfied,  no  regard  being  had  to  the  exposi- 
tion of  justice,  nor  in  the  infliction  of  punishment,  to  indi- 
vidual guilt.  Thus  also  if  a  resident  on  a  certain  street 
commits  a  certain  crime,  the  penalty  is  imposed  on  the 
street,  -and  all  the  houses,  for  instance,  are  demolished. 
There  is  thus  the  destruction  of  the  moral  life  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  there  is  no  consideration  of  the  individual  char- 
acter. There  is  thus  in  the  empire  no  wide  and  complex 
life,  and  no  diversitude  in  thought  and  action.  There  is 
nothing  of  that  wealth  in  art  and  literature  and  laws, 
which  appears  when  the  energies  of  the  people  are  called 
forth  with  the  fresh  and  free  development  of  the  individu- 
ality of  each.  Its  life  thus  has  no  depth,  and  its  action  is 
mechanical,  and  there  is  only  a  wide  and  superficial  uni- 
formity. In  its  best  epochs,  the  empire  can  present  only 
a  few  isolated  figures,  —  the  greatness  of  a  solitary  indi- 
vidual or  a  family  which  are  lifted  far  above  the  people, 
and  their  greatness  is  transient.  This  desolation  of  the 
life  and  spirit  of  the  people  in  imperialism  is  reflected  in 
some  of  the  darkest  pages  in  history,  and  where  the  gloom 
is  deepened  by  the  greatness  of  some  solitary  form  or  some 
line  of  rulers  in  its  lonely  exaltation.  The  annals  of  Taci- 
tus disclose  the  condition  in  Rome,  when  the  conviction 
of  individual  obligation,  and  of  the  authority  of  law,  and  of 
continuity  with  the  past,  and  of  the  relations  of  men 
was  lost,  and  there  remained  only  the  sense  of  subjection 
to  the  will  of  a  single  individual  which  was  external  to  the 
people. 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST   OF   THE   EMPIRE.       345 

The  tendency  in  imperialism  is  not  only  to  undermine 
the  moral  life  and  spirit  of  the  people,  in  its  immediate 
action  in  the  subversion  of  personality,  but  also  to  subvert 
it  as  it  is  formed  in  the  relations  of  life.  In  Rome,  the 
decay  of  the  family  was  in  immediate  connection  with  the 
merging  of  the  nation  in  the  empire.  The  object  is  not 
the  strengthening  of  the  sacredness  of  the  family  relations, 
which  are  in  correlation  with  the  nation  in  its  moral  being, 
but  it  aims  at  the  solitary  grandeur  and  permanence  of  a 
dynasty. 

The  empire  tends  to  obliterate,  when  it  cannot  identify 
with  itself,  the  historical  memorials  which  have,  gathered 
in  the  history  of  the  people.  It  seeks  to  substitute  for 
them  the  associations  and  traditions  of  a  dynasty.  The 
thought  of  the  people  is  diverted  from  its  achievements  in 
the  past,  and  there  is  inculcated  only  the  sense  of  depend- 
ence upon  the  existent  power.  There  is  in  this  con- 
dition no  spirit  through  memory  to  inform  the  mind 
of  the  people.  There  is  nothing  also  to  incite  their  fore- 
thought. In  this  dependence  there  is  no  longer  robust- 
ness of  spirit  or  moral  hardihood ;  and  in  the  empire  the 
people  are  regarded,  and  through  its  forms  are  addressed, 
as  children. 

The  progression  of  the  empire  is  in  contrast  with  the 
law  of  development  in  the  integral  unity  of  the  nation. 
It  tends  to  increase  by  aggregation,  and  its  extension  is  in 
its  material  aggrandizement.  There  is  no  unific  force  act- 
ing from  within  to  shape  and  determine  the  whole,  but  only 
the  decree  of  the  imperator,  which  is  an  external  affair. 
The  sovereignty  of  the  people  forming  the  nation  is  limited 
in  its  own  organic  law,  and  through  its  subsistence  in  the 
organic  whole ;  but  in  the  assumption  of  an  individual  will 
as  in  identity  in  its  domination  with  the  state,  there  is  no 
necessary  limitation  and  no  restriction  to  the  widest  circle, 
to  which  this  will  may  extend  its  authority.  While  the 
sovereignty  of  the  people  in  the  nation  presumes  the  or- 


346  THE  NATION. 

ganization  of  the  whole  people,  the  organization  of  the 
empire  is  established  in  the  edict  of  the  imperator.  The 
pale  of  the  empire  is  the  boundary  of  the  power  affirmed 
in  the  imperial  decree.  The  tendency  of  imperialism  is 
thus  always  to  pass  the  natural  and  historical  boundaries 
by  which  a  people  is  described,  and  it  becomes  an  accumu- 
lation of  peoples,  and  is  formed  not  in  an  organic  relation, 
but  held  by  a  formal  and  external  bond,  which  is  the  impe- 
rial decree.  This  was  the  career  of  Rome  in  the  empire. 
It  did  not  intend  so  vast  or  so  remote  a  conquest;  but 
losing  the  consciousness  of  the  moral  unity  of  the  nation 
in  its  integral  and  historical  life,  and  apprehending  only  a 
formal  relation  in  the  law  or  edict  of  the  empire,  it  was 
borne  on  in  the  accumulation  of  peoples  and  lands  under 
its  authority,  until  overpowered  by  the  mass  it  sunk  be- 
neath its  weight  and  tumbled  in  ruins.  The  same  impulse 
appears  in  the  course  of  England  in  its  empire  in  India. 
The  limit  to  its  sway  is  constantly  being  drawn  only  to  be 
erased.  Wellington  said  it  was  the  Indus,  but  it  was  long 
since  passed,  to  move  on  to  Peshawur  and  on  to  Burmah, 
and  to  secure  the  possession  obtained  which  is  held  by  no 
cohesive  power,  it  is  still  hurried  on  with  alarm  at  external 
aggression.  When  once  the  will  asserts  its  own  individual 
power  as  a  domination  in  the  world,  it  seems,  in  the 
consequent  evil,  to  be  emptied  of  its  own  freedom,  and  it 
moves  as  if  impelled  by  some  fate. 

The  destruction  of  nations  thus  may  be  traced  in  this 
loss  of  their  moral  unity  and  freedom  in  the  transition  to 
empire.  The  decline  and  fall  of  Rome  appears  as  it 
ceases  to  be  a  nation  and  becomes  an  empire.  Its  imperial 
power  had  always  certain  material  attractions,  and  in  its 
inception  it  was  not  without  certain  advantages  ;  it  insti- 
tuted a  more  perfect  civil  order ;  it  terminated  social  wars 
which  had  long  continued  ;  it  brought  an  immediate  secu- 
rity, and  there  was  a  check  upon  the  frauds  and  corruptions 
of  a  praetorial  and  proconsular  administration  ;  it  relieved 


THE  NATION   THE  ANTAGONIST   OF   THE   EMPIRE.      347 

the  people  from  the  agitation  and  concern  in  public  affairs ; 
but  there  was  the  decay  of  public  spirit,  and  the  beginning 
of  those  tendencies  which  were  to  effect  in  their  gradual 
course  the  decline  in  which  the  acquisitions  of  the  centu 
ries  of  its  national  development  were  to  perish.  The  power 
which  once  in  its  discipline  had  been  irresistible,  at  last 
could  defend  no  section  of  its  territory  from  the  inroad  of 
a  single  tribe  out  of  the  many  once  embraced  in  its  con- 
quest. As  its  public  spirit  was  destroyed,  and  its  marvel- 
ous organization  was  broken,  and  the  energy  which  had 
moulded  and  pervaded  its  action  was  undermined,  there  was 
in  imperialism  no  creative  force  to  renew  it,  and  no  recu- 
perative strength  to  overcome  its  decay.  The  same  conse- 
quence with  the  advance  of  imperialism  may  be  seen  in 
Spain.  The  record  of  her  imperial  dominion  under  Philip 
II.  is  told  in  the  proud  story  of  the  chronicler  of  that  day ; 
uhe  held  in  Europe  the  kingdoms  of  Castile,  Aragon, 
and  Navarre,  those  of  Sicily  and  Naples,  Sardinia,  Mi- 
lan, Roussilon,  the  Low  Countries,  the  Balearic  Islands,  and 
Franche  Comte*;  on  the  western  coast  of  Africa  he  held 
the  Canaries,  Cape  Verde,  Oran,  Bujiya,  and  Tunis  ;  in 
Asia  he  held  the  Philippines,  and  a  part  of  the  Moluccas  ;  in 
the  new  world  the  vast  kingdoms  of  Peru,  Mexico,  Chili, 
and  the  provinces  conquered  in  the  last  years  of  Charles 
V.  with  Cuba,  Hispaniola,  and  other  Islands."  But  this 
enumeration  of  so  vast  an  apparent  material  power  is  the 
preface  to  disaster,  and  the  beginning  in  Spain  of  centuries 
of  humiliation.  There  is  a  more  recent  illustration  of  the 
same  tendency  in  imperialism  in  Austria.  In  the  long  roll 
of  soldiers  whom  Francis  Joseph  saluted  on  the  field  of 
Sadowa,  as  his  faithful  children,  there  was  the  German,  the 
Italian,  the  Magyar,  the  Croat,  the  Slovak,  the  Pole,  the 
Rouman ;  but  in  this  multitudinous  mass,  there  was  no  or- 
ganic unity.  They  were  the  representatives  on  the  field  of 
only  a  vast  aggregate  of  peoples  and  states,  and  the  bond 
which  held  them  was  formal,  and  whether  that  bond  be  in 


348  THE  NATION. 

a  confederate  compact  or  an  imperial  edict,  it  can  have  no 
unific  force. 

The  empire  is  formed  in  the  subjection  of  peoples  and 
races.  It  thus  embraces  those  in  the  state  who  are  isolated 
from  the  state.  It  is  a  dominion,  and  is  without  the 
conscious  unity  and  aim  of  the  nation.  The  nation  may 
break  down  the  division  and  antagonism  of  races,  in  a  moral 
order  and  organism,  but  this  principle  is  wanting  in  the 
empire,  and  thus  it  can  only  embrace  subject  races  as  in- 
ferior. It  is  this  which  tends  always  to  bring  the  empire 
into  alliance  with  slavery.  The  government  is  not  formed 
in  the  institution  of  rights,  since  no  rights  are  recognized 
beyond  the  imperial  will,  nor  in  freedom  since  only  the 
will  of  the  imperator  is  allowed  freedom,  nor  is  it  in  the 
protection  of  the  weak  and  the  poor,  but  it  is  the  sign  of 
their  subjection  to  the  strong.  It  comprehends  the  people 
not  as  integral  in  the  state,  but  as  masses  and  fragments, 
and  sects  and  parties  and  races,  and  in  these  conditions 
they  are  subject,  and  the  government  is  an  external  affair. 

The  empire,  since  it  is  a  government  external  to  the 
people,  tends  to  form  an  external  life.  The  moral  strength 
and  energy  of  the  people  is  not  called  forth,  and  there  is 
the  suppression  of  their  spirit.  There  is  a  uniformity  of 
action,  and  the  people  move  mechanically,  and  the  gov- 
ernment is  not  a  power  in  which  the  people  acts.  It  is 
thus  that  the  people  in  the  empire  are  withdrawn  from 
actual  life  by  amusements,  and  are  to  be  diverted  by  shows 
and  pageants  gotten  up  for  them,  and  having  the  attrac- 
tion of  an  external  magnificence. 

As  in  the  empire  the  government  is  isolated  from  the 
people,  the  people  in  their  isolation  become  at  length  no 
longer  affected  by  it.  Their  lives  become  independent  of 
it,  and  it  is  powerless  to  influence  their  actual  condition. 
There  is  thus  in  the  decline  of  Rome,  in  the  empire,  no 
fact  more  sad  than  that  the  actual  condition  of  the  people 
is  unchanged  under  the  most  brutal  and  sensual,  and  the 


THE  NATION   THE  ANTAGONIST   OF   THE   EMPIRE.      349 

most  humane  and  gentle  of  rulers.  It  remains  the  same 
under  Aulus  Vitellius,  and  M.  Antoninus  Aurelius.1 

The  empire  creates  a  false  conception  of  human  power 
and  human  greatness.  There  is  the  assertion  of  power  not 
in  the  service  of  humanity,  but  in  separation  from  it.  In 
the  elevation  of  an  individual  or  a  class,  the  distance 
between  them  and  the  people  is  widened,  and  there 
gathers  about  the  imperial  presence  a  distant  grandeur 
which  removes  it  from  the  common  condition  of  human- 
ity. The  dignity  of  the  empire  is  sought,  not  in  its  moral, 
but  its  material  power.  It  is  estimated  in  the  extent 
of  its  dominion,  or  the  vastness  of  its  ^possessions,  or  the 
number  of  its  armies,  or  the  strength  of  its  armament. 

There  may  be  in  the  empire,  in  its  immediate  inaugura- 
tion, an  apparent  advantage ;  it  may  enable  men  to  devote 
themselves  more  exclusively  to  the  pursuit  of  their  pri- 
vate affairs  and  their  private  ends ;  it  may  relieve  them 
from  attention  to  public  duties  and  the  direction  of  public 
events ;  it  may  introduce  a  more  regular  routine,  and 
more  uniform  method  and  system  in  the  public  adminis- 
tration ;  it  may  display  a  greater  external  splendor,  and 
construct  vast  works  of  public  utility  ;  there  may  be  a 
greater  care  for  the  physical  condition  of  the  people ;  but 
these  may  be  connected  with  the  degradation  of  the  spirit 
of  the  people,  and  there  are  in  these  no  elements  of  polit- 
ical permanence.  The  traces  of  the  possession  of  England 
by  the  Romans,  under  the  empire,  still  may  be  found  in  the 
almost  obliterated  ruins  of  the  bridges,  and  roads,  and  pub- 
lic works,  which  they  constructed ;  but  it  was  in  the  com- 
ing of  a  power  which  sought  to  awaken  the  spiritual  life 

1  There  seems,  in  the  fate  which  instead  of  freedom  is  the  principle  of  the 
empire,  the  reflex  of  the  lives  of  the  people  in  the  life  of  the  individual  im- 
perator.  Gibbon  says,  "  Such  was  the  unhappy  condition  of  the  Roman  emperors, 
that  whatever  might  be  their  conduct,  their  fate  was  commonly  the  same.  A 
life  of  pleasure  or  virtue,  of  severity  or  mildness,  of  indolence  or  glory,  alike  led 
to  an  untimely  grave,  and  almost  every  reign  is  closed  by  the  same  repetition  cf 
treason  and  murder."  —  History,  etc.,  voj,  i.  ch.  12. 


350  THE  NATION. 

and  energies  of  men,  and  wrought  in  the  common  people, 
that  there  was  the  elements  of  an  enduring  strength. 
There  may  be  in  the  empire,  also,  works  of  great  excel- 
lence in  literature  and  art ;  but  these  will  more  often  have 
had  their  root  in  some  earlier  period  of  national  energy, 
and  the  creative  power  in  all  literature  and  art  can  appear 
only  in  the  development  of  a  native  strength.  There 
may  be,  also,  a  greater  civil  code,  although  instituted  from 
the  precedents  formed  more  often  in  an  earlier  period  ; 
but  this  is  the  condition  of  the  civil  corporation,  and  can 
have  only  the  attraction  of  an  external  system. 

The  result  of  the  empire  is  not  always  the  creation  of  a 
vast  or  permanent  material  wealth.  It  has  been  said  that 
the  empire  creates  wealth,  although  it  destroys  credit.  The 
latter  certainly  follows,  since  the  people  cannot  ascertain 
the  intent  of  the  ruler ;  and  the  secret  course  of  the  gov- 
ernment gives  rise  to  distrust  and  foreboding,  and  business 
enterprise  is  checked,  and  men  will  not  risk  large  under- 
takings. But  the  empire  does  not  create  wealth.  It  does 
not  stimulate  human  activity,  nor  incite  the  thrift  and  fore- 
thought and  shrewdness  of  the  people.  The  people  in  the 
empire  are  not  rich.  There  is  greater  inequality  of  for- 
tune, and  wealth  becomes  useless  in  the  hands  of  the  few, 
and  the  poverty  of  the  mass  is  in  contrast  with  the  vast 
riches  of  a  few  individuals  or  families.  In  Great  Britain 
the  increase  of  pauperism  and  the  disappearance  of  the 
yeomanry — that  is  the  larger  number  of  proprietors  — 
has  been  in  proportion  to  the  accumulation  of  lands  in 
the  possession  of  a  few.  In  Rome,  under  the  empire,  the 
nobles  and  farmers  of  the  revenue  were  rich,  while  the 
people  were  poor.  "  They  fight,"  said  a  tribune,  "  to 
maintain  the  luxury  and  wealth  of 'others,  and  they  die, 
with  the  title  of  lords  of  the  earth,  without  possessing  a 
single  clod  to  call  their  own." 

The  condition  of  the  people  in  an  imperialism  is  not 
one  of  happiness.  In  the  midst  of  the  external  power 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  EMPIRE.   351 

of  imperial  Rome,  there  was  in  the  people  no  satisfaction 
of  the  spirit.  This  exists  only  in  the  conscious  energy,  — 
the  freedom  of  the  people  ;  but  in  the  empire  there  is  the 
depression  of  the  spirit.  There  is  no  comprehension  of  a 
moral  end.  The  imperial  government,  if  it  acts  in  respect 
to  the  people,  acts  only  in  doing  what  is  good  for  them, 
while  in  the  nation  the  individual  is  called,  in  its  organic 
and  moral  being,  to  act  in  the  realization  of  that  which  is 
in  itself  good. 

There  is  in  the  empire  the  creation  of  a  love  of  power 
for  its  own  sake,  and  of  domination  for  itself.  It  is  the 
view  of  powers  and  principalities.  The  people  exist  for 
the  government,  and  not  the  government  for  the  people. 
The  former  is  not  the  servitor  of  the  people,  but  the  people 
is  only  its  instrument,  —  the  means  for  its  end.  It  is 
thus  that  it  is  only  in  its  inception,  or  in  certain  transient 
intervals,  that  the  "  empire  is  peace,"  and  the  tendency  of 
mere  power  acting  itself  out  is  to  impel  the  people  into 
war. 

The  influence  of  imperialism,  in  the  subversion  of  the 
freedom  of  the  individual  personality,  tends  to  induce  an 
impression  of  fate.  The  people  when  it  acts,  acts  in 
an  order  which  is  external  to  it,  and  mechanically  and 
blindly,  as  if  impelled  by  some  external  power,  and  not  in 
the  conscious  determination  of  men.  There  thus  arises  a 
sense  of  incapacity  in  the  presence  of  the  evils  weighing 
upon  it.  There  is  the  want  of  responsibility  in  respect  to 
them,  and  as  the  people  is  excluded  from  public  affairs,  the 
decay  of  public  conscience  follows,  and  there  is  no  energy 
nor  effort  toward  the  reform  of  abuses  or  the  removal  of 
wrongs.  The  government,  in  the  destruction  of  the  free- 
dom of  the  individual  person,  is  led  to  invade  the  sphere  of 
the  individual,  and  to  assume  the  immediate  conduct  of  life, 
destroying  all  individuality,  and  determining  the  vocation, 
the  home,  the  marriage,  the  work  and  rest  of  men.  The 
government  also  tends  to  becojne  a  mere  system  of  police, 


352  THE  NATION. 

—  although  as  in  its  civil  system  its  police  may  be  very 
highly  organized,  —  since  in  its  isolation  from  the  people, 
in  order  that  their  course  may  not  also  become  secret  from 
it,  it  has  to  set  spies  over  them,  and  gradually  comes  to 
regard  them  with  suspicion  and  distrust.  There  is  a  ten- 
dency also  to  regulate  life  by  a  formal  and  artificial  stand- 
ard, to  introduce  some  scale  of  virtues  to  denote  the  relative 
excellence  of  deportment,  and  the  reward  of  virtue  is  in 
some  ribbon  or  prize,  and  the  periods  of  life,  as  of  marriage, 
or  rest  from  labor  in  age,  are  assigned  in  conformance  to 
some  uniform  and  external  scheme  of  notation.  It  is  thus 
in  the  empire  that  life  becomes  superficial  and  frivolous, 
and  men  are  diverted  with  toys  and  playthings,  as  in 
China.  Then  the  order  of  the  state  becomes  mechanical, 
and  this  is  the  character  of  administration  in  China,  with 
its  competitive  examinations,  where  political  trusts  and  civil 
offices  are  assigned  by  a  graduated  scale  in  a  pedantic  sys- 
tem. It  is  thus  also  in  the  empire  that  there  is  the  absence 
of  all  event  in  their  history,  and  there  is  in  the  people  an 
apathy,  and  in  their  long  chronological  records  only  a 
monotony.  The  tendency  of  imperialism  has  thus  always 
been,  to  induce  a  fatalism. 

The  nation  may  exist  in  some  transient  period,  through 
confederate  or  imperial  forms,1  but  their  characteristic,  if 

1  In  Russia  there  has  been,  with  an  imperial  form,  the  advance  of  the  people 
in  the  development  of  a  national  life  and  in  freedom ;  but  in  its  imperfect  devel- 
opment the  immediate  danger  to  civilization  is  in  the  identification  of  the  state, 
•with  the  physical  power  of  a  race.  In  France,  the  imperial  policy  has  been  in- 
volved with  constant  contradictions.  It  established  in  universal  suffrage  the 
strongest  guaranty  of  the  rights  of  the  people,  and  in  its  constitution,  says 
Bluntschli,  "  full  deference  is  given  to  the  majesty  of  the  people  of  France,  as  the 
source  of  the  power  of  the  state,  the  legislative  body  is  made  immediately  de- 
pendent upon  its  confidence,  and  the  imperial  power  derived  from  its  will."  The 
title  of  the  emperor  is  "  par  la  gr^ce  de  Dieu  et  la  volente  nationale,  Empereur 
des  Francais."  Its  strength  also  has  been  in  holding  through  imperial  forms  the 
conception  of  the  nation,  and  its  disaster  has  been  in  its  later  abandonment  of 
it,  as  in  its  policy  in  Mexico  and  in  its  later  course  in  Italy.  In  England  the 
tendency  in  imperialism  is  more  apparent.  Its  sympathy,  Michelet  says,  its 
"  grosses  mitgefuhl,"  was  with  the  confederacy.  Its  main  alliance  in  this  age 


THE  NATION  THE  ANTAGONIST  OF  THE  EMPIRE.   353 

the  nation  does  not  fail  in  its  integral  organic  and  moral 
power,  is  the  lack  of  permanence.  The  nation  has  always 
to  contend  with  them  and  to  meet  them  sometimes  in  secret 

is  with  the  empire  of  the  Turks,  and  with  an  historical  fitness,  but  with  no  con- 
sciousness of  its  propriety,  it  received  the  Sultan  at  a  banquet,  at  the  expense 
of  the  Indian  administration,  and  at  a  table  covered  with  the  plunder  of  Rajas' 
palaces.  The  influence  of  imperialism  may  be  traced  in  the  increase  in  it  of 
Roman  ecclesiasticism,  and  in  its  literature  not  more  in  the  open  avowal  of  its 
old  men,  as  Mr.  Carlyle  and  Mr.  Ruskin,  than  in  the  more  than  pagan  fatalism 
of  its  younger  men.  It  has  built  an  empire  in  India,  whose  policy  has  been  to 
crush  every  germ  of  national  spirit  in  its  native  populations;  and  as  the  national 
spirit  in  England,  in  the  defect  of  moral  strength,  has  diminished,  the  power  in 
India  has  been  held  as  the  power  in  a  race,  and  that  race  the  English;  in  its  In- 
dian administration  it  has  had  no  power  to  overcome  caste,  since  its  own  gov- 
ernment is  imbedded  in  caste;  it  has  degraded  the  people,  and  while  under 
Moghul  rule,  the  highest  offices  in  the  army  and  the  state  were  open  to  them,  all 
participation  in  the  government  has  been  denied  them  under  English  rule ;  it  has 
destroyed  the  physical  condition  of  national  well  being,  in  a  varied  industry, 
instead  of  encouraging  this  as  a  securance  against  famine  or  accident,  as  in 
Orissa  it  suppressed  the  salt  manufacture,  which  had  existed  for  ages,  in  order 
to  swell  British  revenue,  and  in  the  single  failure  of  the  rice  crop,  there  was  noth- 
ing for  the  people  to  fall  back  on;  in  its  constitutional  formalism  it  established  a 
system  of  civil  justice,  which  a  people,  before  prompt  to  punish  crime,  found  so 
alien  that  they  preferred  to  submit  to  crime  rather  than  the  infliction  of  the  civil 
system ;  in  its  own  action  it  found  in  the  superstition  of  ignorant  Sepoys  its  in- 
strument, with  which  to  send  them  to  meet  death;  in  its  contact  with  a  people 
from  whom  has  sprung  in  literature  the  speculative  hymns  of  the  Vedas,  and 
the  delicate  purity  of  Kalidasas  verse,  and  the  subtle  metaphysical  contemplation 
of  the  Maha  Bahrata,  and  which  in  art  has  filled  India  with  cities  of  architecture 
so  imposing;  it  has  not  sought  to  develop  the  spirit  of  the  people,  but  to  crush 
and  deface  it.  Thus  under  English  rule,  while  it  may  conceal  a  real  weakness, 
there  has  been  an  apparent  increase  in  Hinduism,  and  a  more  lavish  consump- 
tion of  gold  on  its  idols;  and  even  Mohammedanism  has  increased  under  it,  but 
the  latter  has  come  to  discern  elements  of  peril,  only  in  the  advance  of  Rus- 
sia, while  England's  relation  toward  it  is  regarded  as  one  of  indifference.  In 
its  foreign  policy  it  left  Denmark,  when  even'  higher  principle  would  have  led 
it  to  sustain  it;  it  might  fight  for  the  independence  of  Belgium,  which  is  more 
integral  to  France  than  Scotland  or  Ireland  to  England,  and  whose  independ- 
ence, as  R.  von  Mohl  says,  in  its  origin  is  laughable,  since  this  is  an  outpost  for 
itself  on  the  continent;  it  might  fight  to  prevent  the  independence  of  Egypt, 
since  this  is  on  the  way  to  its  Indian  empire;  it  opposes  a  vast  work,  of  conti- 
nental beneficence,  as  the  Suez  Canal,  and  the  most  effectual  check  to  the  slave 
trade,  with  secret  and  bitter  diplomacy.  The  measure  of  reform  in  its  suf- 
frage may  tend  to  check  its  imperialism;  but  its  main  characteristic  is  the 
incapacity  to  deal  with  the  evils  which  it  recognizes,  in  its  suffrage,  and  educa- 
tion, and  lease  of  land,  and  military  organization.  There  seems  to  be  no  con- 
sciousness of  responsibility  in  the  people  for  them.  The  characteristic  of  its 
policy  is  the  destitution  of  conscience,  "fa  the  eyes  of  her  people,"  says  M. 
23 


354  THE  NATION. 

and  again  open  alliance,  and  in  many  disguisements ;  it  is 
not  on  a  single  field,  nor  in  a  single  age  that  the  conflict 
is  over.  The  close  of  the  history  of  two  of  the7  great  na- 
tions, in  the  ancient  world,  is  the  warning  of  the  evil. 
The  life  of  the  nation  perished, — in  Greece,  in  the  con- 
federacy, in  Rome,  in  the  empire.  The  nation  has  always 
to  contend  with  the  dissolution  of  a  confederate  principal, 
and  the  domination  of  an  imperial  principal. 

De  Tocqueville,  "  that  which  is  most  useful  to  England  is  always  the  cause  of 
justice,  and  the  criterion  of  justice  is  to  be  found  in  the  degree  of  favor  or  oppo- 
sition to  English  interests.1' 


CHAPTER    XIX. 

THE   NATION   THE   INTEGRAL   ELEMENT   IN    HISTORY. 

THE  nation  is  the  integral  element  in  history.  It  is 
as  old  as  history.  The  phrase  which  describes  "  the  new 
doctrine  of  nationalities,"  has  scarcely  a  superficial  justifi- 
cation. 

The  process  of  history  is  a  development  in  the  realiza- 
.on  of  the  moral  order  of  the  world.  There  is  in  it  an 
organic  unity  and  growth,  which  is  the  condition  of  its 
continuous  life.  There  is  the  unity  of  the  divine  idea,  and 
it  holds  a  purpose  appearing  in  and  through  and  uniting 
the  ages.  It  is  a  moral  order,  and  thus  it  has  been  said, 
"  the  history  of  the  world  cannot  be  understood  apart  from 
the  government  of  the  world." 

It  is  in  history  as  the  realization  of  the  moral  order  of 
the  world,  that  the  nation  is  formed  as  an  integral  power. 
It  is  in  this  that  the  vocation  of  the  nation  is  given  to  it, 
as  in  the  fulfilling  of  its  vocation  its  being  as  a  moral  per- 
son is  realized.  This  is  also  implied  in  the  realization  of  a 
moral  order,  since  its  condition  is  in  freedom,  and  there 
can  be  no  history  in  the  law  and  sequence  of  a  physical 
necessity.  The  nation  is  not  then  of  itself  a  righteous 
power,  but  the  realization  of  its  being  through  its  voca- 
tion in  a  moral  order  is  in  righteousness;  not  only  the 
law  of  its  being,  but  the  condition  of  the  realization  of 
its  being,  is  in  righteousness.  In  its  necessary  being  it 
moves  toward  this  end.  Thus  in  anarchy  and  oppression 
and  violence  and  crime  there  is  the  negation  of  its  being. 
Thus,  also,  in  so  far  as  it  fails  of  its  end,  it  passes  from  his- 
tory. As  history  is  in  the  realization  of  a  moral  order,  in 


356  THE  NATION. 

the  unity  of  a  divine  purpose,  when  the  nation  ceases  to 
work  in  its  own  vocation  in  it,  and  to  act  as  a  constructive 
power  in  the  harmony  of  its  design,  then  it  no  more  has  a 
place  in  it.  It  is  this  constant  possibility  of  evil  in  the 
nation  that  involves  the  most  real  obligation,  and  is  the 
incitement  to  the  utmost  energy  and  vigilance,  and  it  is 
this  which  gives  solemnity  to  history. 

The  continuous  process  of  history  is  in  the  nation. 
There  is  formed  in  it  the  transition  from  the  vague  and 
the  indefinite  to  the  determinate  spirit  of  a  conscious  life. 
That  which  lies  beyond  it  has  for  its  characteristic  the 
undefined.  The  life  of  the  nation  in  its  beginning,  as  in 
the  individual,  holds  the  slow  awakening  of  a  conscious 
aim.  It  is  in  the  moments  of  its  existence,  hidden  from 
sight,  as  are  the  changes  in  the  process  of  life  in  every 
form.  The  early  incident  and  circumstance  in  the  life  of 
the  people  offer  but  the  faint  premonition  of  its  course, 
and  there  is  but  the  dim  dawning  of  that  vocation,  which 
in  the  retrospect  of  a  fulfilled  purpose,  rises  into  clearer 
light.  But  as  the  indication  of  its  spirit,  these  events  may 
be  wrought  in  traditions,  or  again,  in  the  type  they  hold, 
while  in  their  immediate  event  of  no  significance,  they 
are  kept  in  reverent  memory,  and  are  cherished  in  the 
reminiscence  of  the  people.  They  are  often,  in  the  pur- 
pose which  they  prefigure,  and  through  the  refraction  of 
events,  invested  with  a  light  "which  was  not  on  sea  or 
shore,"  but  become  always  more  clear  in  the  march  of 
the  people.  Then  in  the  advance  of  its  conscious  life,  it 
may  be  that  language  has  a  more  unitary  and  ampler 
development ;  but  while  language  may  of  itself  often  indi- 
cate the  boundary  of  a  people,  it  is  yet  only  the  incident 
and  not  the  foundation  of  its  unity.  Then  tribunals  and 
institutions  of  justice,  and  codes  and  instruments  of  law, 
are  defined  and  established.  There  are  in  .  its  services 
and  solemnities,  in  its  days  and  festivals,  the  memorials 
of  the  greater  events  in  its  course.  There  is,  then,  in 


THE  NATION  THE  INTEGRAL  ELEMENT   IN  HISTORY.      357 

literature  and  art,  the  work  of  its  creative  power,  the 
impress  of  its  character  and  the  reflection  of  its  spirit. 
There  is  indeed  in  each  of  these,  and  in  all  their  forms, 
—  in  law  and  literature  and  art,  —  a  universal  element, 
and  their  excellence  is  in  its  more  perfect  expression,  but 
this  instead  of  forming  an  external  limitation  to  the  being 
of  the  nation  as  a  moral  person,  is  implied  in  personality, 
and  is  more  manifest  in  its  higher  realization.  Then  law 
and  literature  and  art  have  their  continuous  development 
in  the  nation,  and  their  conservation  in  it ;  it  is  thus  that 
one  speaks  not  only  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  mind,  its 
quality  and  character,  but  of  the  unity  apparent  through 
the  polity  and  literature  and  art  of  Greece  and  Rome. 

The  nation  is  formed  in  the  elevation  of  man  above  an 
animal  existence.  It  is  not  defined  in  a  merely  physical 
basis,  and  in  certain  physical  relations.  Its  end  is  not  the 
satisfaction  of  physical  wants  alone,  nor  is  it  compre- 
hended in  the  sequence  of  physical  necessity.  It  is  as 
the  course  of  freedom  that  it  becomes  the  expression  of 
a  determinate  spirit,  and  the  assertion  of  the  dominion  of 
man  over  nature.  It  is  in  its  free  spirit  that  man  is  raised 
from  the  stupidity  of  an  animal  condition.  There  is  the 
inspiration  of  a  conscious  energy.  Thus  in  Greek  and 
Roman  art  there  is  the  expression  of  the  exaltation  of 
humanity,  —  a  victory  which  it  gains,  —  which"  gives  to 
it  its  highest  type.  In  the  Greek  it  is  the  victory  of 
the  human  over  the  earthly  and  sensual ;  and  in  the  Ro- 
man it  is  a  moral  discipline  and  virtue,  in  which  there 
is  the  sign  of  a  conquest  over  the  merely  unorganized 
and  undisciplined  mass,  and  it  is  this  in  each  which  gives 
a  spiritual  element  to  its  ideal. 

The  nation,  as  it  is  the  power  in  history,  is  formed 
in  the  conditions  of  history.  Its  course  must  be  one  of 
conflict  and  endeavor.  Its  battle  and  victory  is  in  no  ai 
less  conquest.  Its  vocation  is  no  indefeasible  inheritance. 
Its  freedom  is  realized  only  in  its  ceaseless  work ;  it  doe? 


358  THE  NATION. 

not  come,  as  things  are  let  to  fare  on.  Its  strength  is  not 
born  out  of  the  sky,  nor  wrought  in  dreams.  It  is  indeed 
maintained  only  by  eternal  vigilance.  The  nation  must 
always  strive,  and  it  is  not  here  nor  now  that  it  can  cease 
from  its  labor  nor  enter  its  rest.  There  can  be  no  danger 

o 

so  great  as  that  in  which  it  shall  dream  in  any  moment 
that  it  is  saved,  and  that  its  struggle  is  over,  and  its  con- 
flict is  closed.  It  is  with  many  doubts  and  many  fears,  and 
with  discipline  and  sacrifice,  that  it  is-  to  work  out  its  sal- 
vation. 

The  nation  is  the  work  of  God  in  history.  Its  unity  and 
its  continuity  through  the  generations  is  in  Him.  He  is 
present  with  it  as  with  the  individual  person,  and  this  is 
the  condition  of  its  being,  as  a  moral  person.  Its  vocation 
is  from  God,  and  its  obligation  is  only  to  God,  and  its  free- 
dom is  His  gift.  The  transmitted  purpose  which  it  bears 
in  its  vocation,  is  in  the  fulfillment  of  His  will.  The  pro- 
cession of  history  is  in  the  life  of  nations,  and  in  the  per- 
fected nation,  is  the  goal  of  history. 

There  is  before  the  nation  the  attainment  of  the  end 
of  history.  It  is  the  constituent  power  in  which  history 
is  borne  to  its  end.  It  is  to  act  not  only  in  but  for  the 
order  of  God.  This  is  apparent  in  its  relations.  It  is 
given  to  the  nation  to  act  in  the  realization  of  the  individ- 
ual personality  —  the  formation  of  human  character.  The 
individual  first  becomes  a  person  in  the  nation.  The  pow- 
ers of  the  individual  are  called  forth,  in  the  sphere  of  its 
law  and  its  freedom.  The  nation  has  also  to  maintain  in 
conformance  to  their  moral  conception  all  the  relations  of 
life  as  integral  in  a  moral  order.1 

It  is  given  to  the  nation  to  assert  and  establish  its  au- 
thority as  law.  It  is  a  law  regulative  of  the  action  of  the 
individual.  This  power  belongs  to  no  individual,  and  to 
no  collection  of  individuals,  but  it  is  in  the  nation. 

l  "  Ein  kosmopolitisches  menschliches  Leben,  ist  eine  leere  werthlose  Abstrac 
tion."  —  Rothe,  Anfanye  der  Christlichen  Kirche,  p.  16. 


THE  NATION   THE  INTEGRAL  ELEMENT  IN  HISTORY.      359 

It  is  given  to  the  nation  to  bear  to  its  issue,  the  conflict 
with  slavery.  It  is  not  only  formed  in  the  determination 
of  the  spirit  in  its  freedom,  but  it  has  to  contend  with  the 
dominations  over  men,  in  the  bondage  of  the  world.  To 
contend  with  slavery  is  the  work  which  through  providence 
in  history  has  been  given  to  the  nation.  This  is  only  the 
statement  of  an  historical  fact ;  the  work  has  been  given 
to  no  individual,  and  to  no  special  or  ecclesiastical  associa- 
tion of  men,  but  to  the  nation.  The  nation  in  the  realiza- 
tion of  its  own  being,  —  in  the  maintenance  of  its  own 
unity  and  its  own  life,  —  is  borne  on  to  an  inevitable  con- 
flict with  slavery.  It  may  be  for  the  nation  gradually  to 
overcome  it  by  ameliorating  laws  and  institutions,  or  in 
some  sudden  moment  to  meet  it  in  direct  conflict,  when 
slavery  aims  at  its  life,  and  it  is  only  through  convulsive 
effort  that  it  uproots  it  in  order  to  live.  Yet  it  is  never 
utterly  removed,  but  will  take  root  in  other  fields  and  in 
other  forms.  The  forces  in  antagonism  to  the  nation  it 
joins  in  its  alliance.  The  struggle  of.  Greece  was  with 
slavery  as  the  ally  of  confederatism,  and  of  Rome  with 
slavery  as  the  ally  of  imperialism.  The  conflict  has  fol- 
lowed with  clearer  issue  in  the  new  world,  and  victory  has 
been  given  to  the  nation  in  its  redemptive  years. 

There  is  given  to  the  nation  no  separate  and  special  end, 
but  its  vocation  and  its  work  is  for  humanity.  This  end  is 
presumed  in  its  being  as  a  constituent  element  in  and  for 
the  moral  order  of  the  world,  for  the  moral  order  of  the 
world  is  the  fulfillment  of  humanity  in  God.  The  con- 
ception and  realization  of  the  life  of  humanity  does  not 
exclude  the  being  of  the  nation,  as  if  it  was  simply  ex- 
ternal to  it,  nor  as  if  it  was  to  disappear  merged  into  it. 

The  nation  on  the  contrary  comes  forth  in  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  life  of  humanity.  The  life  of  humanity  is  not 
a  restriction,  as  in  some  external  limitation,  to  the  nation 
as  a  moral  person,  but  its  fulfillment  is  in  the  nation  as  a 
moral  person.  It  is  thus  that  Jhere  is  in  the  nation  a  con- 


360  .  THE  NATION. 

slant  exclusion  of  a  selfish  egoism  instead  of  a  construction 
of  society  out  of  it.  It  is  thus  also  —  as  becomes  more 
apparent  in  the  course  of  the  modern  world  —  that  it  is 
not  in  the  power  of  men  to  hold  the  nation  in  their  own 
exclusive  possession,  nor  to  have  their  own  way  in  it,  nor 
to  warp  it  after  their  own  arbitrary  schemes  and  designs, 
nor  to  identify  it  with  their  own  selfish  and  private  ends. 
It  is  thus  also  that  it  cannot  be  retained  in  the  exclusive 
claim  of  a  family  or  a  race.  In  its  work  for  humanity, 
and  its  fulfillment  in  its  divine  origin  and  relations,  the 
nation  has  been  formed  in  the  modern  world.  The  Turks 
appear  as  a  power  in  identity  with  a  race,  but  there  is  ap- 
parent the  absence  of  a  national  being,  and  there  is  want- 
ing the  organization  of  law  and  freedom  and  rights. 

There  is,  in  a  certain  school,  a  tendency  to  refer  the 
whole  course  and  development  of  civilization  to  races,  and 
to  regard  separate  races  in  their  racial  character,  as  the 
integral  powers  in  history.  In  this  assumption  the  history 
of  the  world  is  apprehended  as  consequent  not  from  the 
special  and  physical  properties  of  the  soil,  the  climate,  and 
the  like,  but  from  the  properties  of  races.  The  devel- 
opment of  history  is  presumed  in  the  institution  of  the 
power  and  supremacy  of  a  race.  The  most  complete 
construction  of  history  is  traced  through  the  suggestion  of 
names  in  ancient  genealogical  records,  and  the  most  elab- 
orate and  far-reaching  theories  are  literally  built  upon  no 
other  foundation  than  the  scattered  bricks  of  the  ruins  of 
the  tower  of  Babel,  in  whose  hieroglyphics  modern  philolo- 
gists decipher  the  whole  course  of  history,  and  find  the 
key  that  opens  all  its  changes.  The  only  exodus  of  na- 
tions which  it  allows,  is  in  the  judgment  on  the  dispersion 
of  the  builders,  and  the  only  genesis  is  in  the  confusion  of 
their  language.  The  same  tendency  appears  in  the  shap- 
ing of  history,  after  theories  of  Aryan  spirit  and  Aryan 
life.  There  may  be  in  the  physical  distinction  of  races 
the  elements  of  diversitude,  and  of  an  ampler  and  more 


THE  NATION  THE  INTEGRAL  ELEMENT  IN  HISTORY.      361 

opulent  culture  and  character,  and  the  physical  laws  and 
properties  of  races  are  to  be  studied  and  not  to  be  disre- 
garded ;  but  to  assert  the  identity  of  the  nation  with  a  race| 
is  to  assume  for  it  a  physical  foundation,  and  involves  the! 
denial  of  its  moraLuiiit$Laiid_J^  If  the  utmost  1 

that  language  and  architecture  and  art  and  every  mode  of 
culture  may  indicate,  be  allowed  to  racial  characteristics, 
the  conclusion  yet  remains,  which  has  the  universality  of  a 
law,  that  there  may  be  the  widest  possible  contrast  in  re- 
spect to  civilization  in  the  same  race,  alike  in  the  same 
age,  or  in  mainly  the  same  condition  of  soil  and  climate 
in  succeeding  ages,  and  that  this  contrast  will  be  in  exact 
proportion  to  the  development  of  the  life  of  the  nation.  It 
also  conversely  remains,  that  in  the  destruction  of  the  na- 
tion there  will  appear  anarchy,  violence,  slavery,  and  the 
want  of  a  continuity  of  purpose,  that  is  the  extinction  of 
civilization,  whatever  be  the  racial  capacities  and  charac- 
teristics of  men.  The  conception  also  of  a  power  whose 
strength  is  in  a  race,  and  whose  distinction  is  in  the  separa- 
tion of  a  race,  does  not  represent  the  hope  which  is  mov- 
ing in  history,  and  is  in  direct  antagonism  to  the  historical 
course  of  the  modern  world.  The  dream  of  a  vast  feder- 
ation of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  which  recent  English  pub- 
licists have  told,  in  which  certain  nations  were  to  act  and 
to  subsist,  as  the  defense  of  the  deposit  of  modern  civil- 
ization, is  an  illusion  which  could  only  arise  with  the  decay 
of  national  spirit  in  England.  The  project  of  a  federa- 
tion of  the  Latin  race  which  the  Emperor  of  the  French 
may  at  one  time  have  indulged,  which  was  to  embrace  two 
continents,  and  to  hold  in  security  the  same  deposit,  met 
with  immediate  disaster,  and  its  weakness  was  apparent  as 
it  came  in  conflict  with  the  nations.  The  attempt  to  or- 
ganize as  a  political  power  the  Slavonic  races,  becomes  a 
source  of  the  utmost  peril,  and  not  of  progress  in  civiliza- 
tion ;  and  there  is  nothing  in  the  cry  of  Panslavism  which 
will  move  the  spirits  of  men.  and  inspire  the  courage  of 


362  THE  NATION. 

armies,  as  do  the  words  which  express  the  moral  being  of 
the  nation,  —  the  cry  of  "  Holy  Russia ! "    It  is  the  nation 

j  in  its  organic  and  moral  unity,  which  acts  as  a  power  in 
*  history,  and  not  a  race  in  its  special  and  separate  physi- 
cal character.  The  fact  in  correspondence  with  this  has 
always  been,  that  the  nation  has  been  rent  and  broken  in 
its  strength  and  swept  from  the  foundation  on  which  it 
alone  can  subsist,  when  it  has  assumed  to  identify  itself 
exclusively  with  a  race,  or  to  build  upon  the  distinction  of 
races.  It  has  no  longer  a  moral  foundation,  nor  a  universal 
end  when  it  asserts  as  its  ground  the  rights  of  a  race,  and 
not  the  rights  of  man;  and  the  government  which  no 
longer  recognizes  justice  as  necessary,  nor  subsists  in  the 
sovereignty  and  freedom  of  the  people  in  a  moral  organ- 
ism, but  is  in  identity  with  a  race,  is  the  sign  of  an  expir- 
ing civilization.1 

The  nation  is  the  power  on  which  is  laid  the  work  of 
history.  The  power  has  not  been  with  the  more  vast 
populations,  nor  extensive  territories,  nor  long  dynas- 

*  ties,  but  in  the  nation.  The  empires  lie  apart  from  the 
line  of  the  historical  development  of  humanity.  It  is  not 
in  them  that  its  purpose  is  discerned,  nor  in  their  years 

1  "  The  thought  —  that  every  one,  even  the  least,  his  welfare,  his  rights,  his 
dignitv,  is  the  concern  of  the  state  —  that  every  one  in  his  own  personality  is  to 
be  regarded,  and  protected,  and  honored,  and  esteemed,  without  respect  to  ances- 
try, or  rank,  or  race,  or  gifts,  if  only  he  bear  the  human  face  and  form ;  this  is  the 
characteristic  principle  of  the  age,  and  its  true  distinction.  This  principle  is 
alien  to  the  earlier  ages,  and  wen  to  the  age  of  the  Reformation.  It  is  first  in 
the  modern  age,  that  humanity  in  its  full  conception  has  become  an  energizing 
principle  of  right  and  duty,  determining  the  whole  order  of  society."-- Stahl, 
Philosophic  des  Rechts,  vol.  ii.  sec.  1,  p.  345. 

"  The  inner  life  of  man  is  manifested  in  the  evolution  of  society;  the  love  of 
the  family  passes  into  the  love  of  the  state,  and  the  love  of  the  state  rises  into 
the  all-embracing  love  of  humanity."  —  Comte,  Politique  Positive,  ii.  14. 

Bluntschli,  writing  simply  as  the  historian  of  political  movements,  says  of 
''  nationality  and  humanity  as  the  two  conceptions  at  once  limit  and  fill  each 
Other.  In  the  earlier  ages  a  national  spirit  has  had  an  apparent  influence  in 
politics  and  the  formation  of  the  state;  but  in  none  has  it  wrought  with  the  con- 
scious energy  of  this  age.  Clearly  discerned  as  the  guiding-star  of  coming 
political  life  appears  the  highest  conception  of  humanity."  —  Geschichte  det 
AHegem.  Statsrechts  und  der  Politik,  p.  659. 


THE  NATION   THE  INTEGRAL   ELEMENT   IN  HISTORY.      363 

that  its  continuous  design  is  traced,  nor  in  their  conquests 
has  there  appeared  the  progress  of  mankind.  There  has 
not  been  in  them  the  awakening  of  the  spiritual  energies 
of  men.  The  discovery  of  all  that  remains  of  them,  the 
colossal  fragments  of  the  architecture  which  they  raised, 
indicate  as  their  characteristic  the  representation  of  animal 
existence,  and  the  worship  of  animal  forms.  Their  spiritual 
powers  were  sunk  in  an  animal  condition,  with  them  there 
was  no  Odyssey  of  the  adventure  of  a  moral  life,  and  no 
Iliad  of  march  and  battle  to  maintain  the  relations  of  a 
moral  order.  Their  names,  in  the  monotony  of  their  ex- 
istence, often  owe  their  preservation  to  a  passing  allusion 
in  the  literature  of  some  nation  with  whom  in  some  mo- 
ment they  were  brought  in  contact,  or  the  bare  record  of 
the  dates  in  their  cycles  is  deciphered  in  the  fading  lines 
on  the  broken  and  scattered  stones  of  their  buildings. 
Thus  in  the  ancient  ages  it  was  not  in  the  vast  empires  of 
the  east,  as  Nineveh  and  Babylon  and  Assyria,  that  there 
was  the  work  of  history,  nor  that  the  development  of  the 
spirit  appears,  but  it  was  almost  alone  in  three  nations, — 
in  Judaea  and  Greece  and  Rome.  Their  advance  was  the 
progress  of  civilization.  In  them  was  kept  the  prophecy 
of  humanity  in  history,  their  victory  was  its  moral  con- 
quest, and  its  imperishable  renown.  In  the  modern  ages 
the  course  of  history  is  in  the  peoples  in  whom  is  the  real- 
.zation  of  the  national  being.  It  is  thus  in  France  and  in 
England.  With  the  unfolding  of  the  ages  this  becomes 
more  manifest.  The  movements  of  this  age  apart  from  it 
are  incomprehensible,  its  battles  have  no  significance,  and 
its  crises  no  decision.  Thus  Italy,  from  weakness  and 
division  in  her  separate  provinces  and  rival  cities,  with 
the  call  of  a  united  Italy,  is  struggling  toward  a  national 
unity.  Germany,  from  its  narrow  communities  and  sove- 
reignties, each  with  its  pedantic  pretensions  to  legitimacy, 
and  the  trivial  forms  of  its  courts,  with  their  orders  of 
scholars  and  soldiers,  is  rising  to  the  unity  of  the  German 


364  THE   NATION. 

nation  ;  and  on  the  United  States  was  laid  the  call  to  that 
battle,  in  which  victory  through  long  sacrifice  is  the  mani- 
festation of  the  unity  and  being  of  the  nation  in  the  real- 
ization of  the  freedom  of  humanity.  These  events  are 
indeed  the  witness  borne  through  the  sacrifice  of  nations, 
to  the  resurrection  of  the  spiritual  powers  of  man,  and  the 
deliverance  of  the  redemptive  life.1  They  are  the  dawning 
of  the  new  ages  of  humanity.  They  who  live  in  them 
stand  in  an  Apocalypse. 

It  is  because  the  nation  is  formed .  as  a  power  in  history 
that  in  its  decay  it  passes  from  history.  Its  decay  is  the 
dissolution  of  the  moral  order  and  the  severance  of  the 
moral  relations,  in  which  the  individual  exists.  The  out- 
ward circumstance  may  remain  the  same.  There  is  the 
same  race  or  races,  the  same  people  who  dwell  among  the 
memorials  of  the  toil  and  sacrifice  of  their  fathers,  and  the 
same  land  which  was  their  ancient  inheritance.  The  moun- 
tains and  field  and  sky  are  still  the  same,  but  in  the  con 
trast  with  that  which  has  been,  they  who  dwell  among  them 
in  the  course  of  physical  nature  that  changes  not,  are  as 
those  that  "  'gin  to  be  a'weary  o'  the  sun."  The  presence 
has  vanished  in  whose  light  all  things  were  transfigured. 
There  is  no  more  the  glory  they  have  known.  They  hold 
no  more  in  the  strength  of  a  conscious  purpose,  the  hope 
of  humanity.  This  dissolution  of  the  moral  being  and 
unity  of  the  nation,  can  follow  only  in  the  most  awful 
crime  and  corruption  of  a  people,  and  its  consequence  is 
in  the  most  far-reaching  disaster.  There  is  in  it  a  con- 
suming of  power,  and  withering  of  energy,  which  only 
evil  can  effect.  It  is  only  in  the  denial  of  the  calling, 
which  has  been  borne  toward  its  fulfillment  by  the  fathers, 
and  in  the  consequent  degradation  of  humanity,  that  the 

1  "  Whoever  does  not  assume  unconditionally  the  might  of  goodness  in  the 
world,  and  its  ultimate  victory:  whoever  starts  from  moral  unbelief,  not  only 
cannot  lead  in  human  affairs,  but  must  follow  with  reluctant  steps.  We  live  in- 
deed in  the  kingdoms  of  the  redemption,  and  no  more  in  the  kingdoms  of  thia 
world."  —  Rothe,  7%e<%«c£e  Ethik,  vol.  iii.  sec.  2,  p.  901. 


THE  NATION   THE  INTEGRAL  ELEMENT  IN  HISTORY.      365 

nation  can  perish.  There  is  in  it  the  judgment  of  history. 
The  convulsions  of  the  physical  world  have  no  corre- 
spondence for  it ;  in  the  words  of  the  Roman  statesman, 
it  is  as  if  "  the  whole  world  were  to  perish,  and  to  tumble 
in  ruins."1  The  voice  of  no  prophet,  however  trem- 
ulous with  the  burden  of  its  sorrow,  can  express  the  woe 
to  come.  It  is  the  severance  from  the  generations  which 
have  been,  and  from  the  generations  which  are  to  be  ; 
it  is  "a  day  of  woe  unto  them  that  are  with  child,  and 
there  shall  be  great  distress  in  the  land,  and  wrath  upon 
this  people,  and  they  shall  fall  by  the  edge  of  the  sword, 
and  shall  be  led  away  captive  into  all  nations."  The  doom 
falls  upon  the  whole  land,  and  there  is  none  exempt.  Judaea, 
when  the  life  of  the  nation  was  dying,  and  its  calling  was 
forgotten,  and  its  unity  broken  in  the  assumption  of  sects 
and  the  pretension  of  parties,  and  it  was  to  reject  in  its 
royal  line  One  who  came  to  it  as  the  eternal  King  and 
Priest  and  Prophet  of  humanity,  who  wept  over  its  Cap- 
ital at  the  vision  of  its  approaching  desolation,  is  no 
longer  a  power  in  history,  and  the  people  pass  from  the 
gates  of  its  immortal  city,  not  yet  returning  again.  It  is 
scattered  over  the  world,  and  among  nations  is  as  no  na- 
tion. The  days  come  to  them  as  to  the  stranger,  and  their 
path  through  distant  lands  is  marked  by  persecution. 
There  was  in  Greece,  in  the  conflict  with  the  multitudes 
of  the  East  and  their  empires,  a  conscious  moral  spirit, 
which  has  placed  the  scene  of  them  among  the  immortal 
battle-fields  of  the  world;  but  when  there  succeeded  the 
contention  of  her  separate  communities,  in  which  the  life 
of  the  nation  perished,  the  ideal  fades  from  her  art,  while 
there  yet  remains  the  versatile  and  crafty  skill,  and  the 
supple  cunning  of  the  hand.  The  character  of  the  people 
becomes  frivolous,  and  their  purpose  vain  and  empty ;  they 
become  traders  and  tricksters  in  words,  the  sophists  and 

1  "  Simile  est  quodam  modo,  ac  si  omnis  hie  mundus  intereat  et  concidat."  — 
Cicero,  De  Republic^  iii.  23. 


366  THE  NATION. 

rhetoricians  who  wander  from  city  to  city,  and  are  led 
away  as  slaves  by  other  peoples  to  be  made  their  tutors : 
their  land  is  converted  into  a  province  of  a  foreign  em- 
pire, and  for  centuries  they  are  subject  to  the  dominion 
of  the  Turks.1  The  decadence  of  the  national  life  of 
Rome  was  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  its  history.  The 
figures  of  noble  dignity  and  severity  pass  away  with  her 
triumphal  processions.  The  elements  of  the  moral  being 
of  the  nation,  the  unity  of  organization,  the  devotion  to 
public  ends,  the  strength  of  discipline,  the  reverence  for 
law,  the  sacredness  of  the  family,  all  perish.  The  people 
are  overcome  by  invaders  whom  once  two  or  three  legions 
could  hold  in  easy  subjection  ;  and  the  land  is  open  to  for- 
eign peoples,  and  shakes  with  the  tread  of  foreign  armies. 
The  fall  of  the  nation  in  its  influence  upon  the  individual 
is  reflected  through  centuries,  and  the  crimes  which  occa- 
sioned it  leave  their  impress  upon  him.  As  its  maintenance 
in  its  unity  and  moral  being  is  the  highest  blessing,  and  for 
those  who  are  to  be,  so  also  in  its  destruction  the  disaster 
sweeps  on  and  embraces  them. 

While  the  destruction  of  the  nation  can  come  only  in 
the  issue  of  the  most  awful  crime,  and  is  manifest  in  the 
judgment  of  history,  it  has  not  in  history  its  final  close. 
The  life  whose  unity  was  revealed  in  sacrifice,  does  not 
wholly  perish.  There  may  intervene  centuries  of  humili- 
ation and  defeat,  and  the  people  be  scattered  or  carried 
into  distant  captivities,  but  its  spirit  still  lives.  Though  it 
is  overborne  by  the  migrations  of  races  and  the  vicissi- 

1  Niebuhr  says  of  Greece :  "  All  its  ancient  institutions,  nay  its  faith  itself, 
had  vanished,  and  there  was  nothing  to  compensate  for  the  loss.  The  Greeks 
possessed  no  less  intelligence,  perhaps  even  more  than  before ;  there  was  more 
knowledge,  insight,  etc.  Whatever  can  be  made  they  did  make ;  but  what  can- 
not be  made  by  every  one  who  has  diligence  and  ambition  to  exert  his  powers, 
such  as  epic  and  lyric  poetry,  these  were  lacking.  Instead  of  the  venerable 
tragedies  of  old,  they  had  comedies.  But  on  the  other  hand  the}'  were  further 
advanced  in  the  arts  and  the  mechanical  skill  which  belongs  to  practical  life. 
Their  speculations  were  more  subtle  and  logical,  but  there  was  no  more  grand 
philosophy  of  nature;  they  still  possessed  political  cleverness,  but  we  find  no 
political  orators."  — Ancient  History,  vol.  iii.  p.  18. 


THE  NATION  THE  INTEGRAL   ELEMENT   IN  HISTORY.      367 

tudes  of  empires,  yet  the  type  of  its  being  is  not  effaced. 
The  faith  of  the  fathers  and  the  hope  of  the  children  does 
not  all  fail.  The  words  of  its  prophets  are  not  all  vain. 
There  may  come  in  the  life  of  nations  the  renewal  of  its 
years,  and  there  is  manifest  in  them  the  power  which  can 
"restore  the  leaves  which  the  locust  has  eaten."  There 
is  the  faith  that  the  nation  is  immortal.  There  is  in  na- 
tions the  witness  to  the  power  of  a  resurrection.  In  some 
hour  its  sleep  is  broken  by  the  gray  of  the  new  dawn,  and 
its  sealed  springs  are  touched  again.  This  is  no  allusive 
phrase  and  no  vague  imagery,  drawn  from  the  sphere  of 
the  spiritual  life  of  the  individual,  but  it  is  the  reality  of 
history,  and  its  recognition  is  in  the  conscious  life  of  na- 
tions. There  is  in  this  age  an  increasing  testimony  to  it, 
and  not  only  in  the  later,  but  in  the  ancient  nations. 
Judaea  through  centuries  of  wandering  does  not  lose  her 
national  character ;  and  the  last  words  of  her  prophets 
spoke  of  the  restoration  of  Israel.  In  Greece,  so  long 
overborne  by  a  foreign  domination,  there  is  yet  a  sleep  that 
is  full  of  dreams,  and  the  stirrings  of  a  new  energy,  and 
the  broken  signs  of  a  new  spirit.  The  life  of  Rome 
in  its  historic  unity,  is  yet  apparent  in  the  purpose  of  a 
people,  and  is  being  renewed  in  its  ancient  seats.  In  the 
evidence  of  history  the  most  utter  and  isolated  individual- 
ism, the  most  exclusive  and  distant  ecclesiasticism,  cannot 
affirm  the  extinction  of  the  life  of  nations.1 

The  moral  order  of  the  world  is  the  fulfillment  of  hu- 
inanity  in  God.    This  is  the  development  of  history.     The 

l  "  The  key  to  the  political  movements  in  Europe  is  obviously  the  resurrection 
of  nationalities."—  Mr.  Bancrofts  Letter,  1867. 

The  evidence  of  the  power  of  a  resurrection  in  nations  has  been  stated,  not 
apparently  by  any  design  nor  with  any  reference  to  a  real  presence,  as  the  char- 
acteristic of  the  modern  world,  that  is,  the  world  since  the  manifestation  of  the 
Christ.  "  All  ancient  states  were  short-lived.  Once  declining  they  never  recov- 
ered. Their  course  was  that  of  a  projectile,  —  a  rise,  a  maximum,  a  precipitate 
descent.  Modern  nations  are  long  lived,  and  possess  recuperative  powers  wholly 
unknown  to  antiquity."  —  Dr.  Lieber,  jlmer.  Presb.  Rev.,  1868. 


368  THE  NATION. 

realization  of  the  moral  is  toward  a  definitely  Christian 
principle.  This  is  necessarily  implied  in  the  Christian 
principle,  as  the  universal  and  the  immutable,  that  is  the 
moral.  As  the  nation  is  called  to  be  a  power  in  history,  it 
is  in  the  realization  of  its  being  the  Christian  nation.  It 
is  this  in  its  necessary  conception.  It  has  not  in  its  option 
the  alternative  to  determine  whether  it  shall  be,  but  yet 
shall  or  shall  not  be  this,  but  its  necessary  realization  is 
the  Christian  nation.  And  conversely,  as  history  is  in  its 
development  the  realization  of  a  moral  order,  it  is  only  as 
the  nation  acts  in  and  for  that  order  that  the  nation  has 
its  being  in  history.  It  is  thus  that  its  freedom  has  been 
wrought  in  the  power  of  the  redemption,  and  its  renewal 
in  the  power  of  the  resurrection.  In  other  words,  the  only 
completion  of  the  state  is  in  the  Christian  state,  and  it 
is  as  a  power  in  history,  which  is  the  redemptive  life  of 
humanity,  that  it  has  its  vocation  and  its  destination.1 

The  nations  of  the  ancient  ages,  Judaea  and  Greece  and 
Rome,  in  their  historical  calling,  held  in  their  ongoing 
toward  the  coming  of  the  Christ,  the  fulfillment  of  the 
divine  purpose.  In  the  new  ages,  the  ages  of  the  Christ 
and  his  coming,  the  nations  have  existed  in  the  historical 
Christian  development.  The  formative  principle  of  their 
life  has  been  derivative  from  the  Life.  The  nation  con- 
versely, has  no  realization  in  the  new  ages  beyond  the  line 
of  the  historical  Christian  development.  Whatever  may 
be  the  preconception  of  events,  or  the  inference  of  politi- 
cal theories  or  speculations,  this  is  the  realism  of  history. 

1  "  We  know  nothing  of  an  antithesis  between  the  moral  and  the  political. 
The  state  in  which  the  Christian  is  to  live  must  be  bound  by  the  same  divine 
will  that  binds  him,  and  it  must  have  the  same  for  its  nature  which  he  recognizes 
as  his  innermost  nature."  —  Schleiermacher,  Christliche  Silte,  p.  279. 

"  There  is,  in  concrete,  no  state  corresponding  to  the  conception  that  can  be 
conceived,  but  the  Christian  state,  that  is,  the  state  as  determined  through  the 
moral  principle,  which  is  definitely  Christian. 

"Christianity  is  essentially  a  political  principle,  and  a  politico  jrwer.  It  is 
constructive  of  the  state,  and  bears  in  itself  the  power  of  forming  the  state  and 
of  developing  it  to  its  full  completeness."  —  Rothe,  Theologische  ElhiJc,  vol.  iii 
sec.  2,  p.  968. 


THE  NATION  THE  INTEGRAL-  ELEMENT   IN   HISTORY.       869 

And  there  has  been  no  people  in  whom  the  life  revealed 
in  the  Christian  development  has  been  implanted,  and  has 
become  a  living  energy,  but  it  has  acted  as  a  formative 
political  principle,  and  formative  of  the  nation.  There 
is  no  fact  more  significant  than  that  in  the  same  centu- 
ries, in  the  lands  in  which  Mohammedanism  has  existed, 
there  has  been  no  national  life.  It  has  prevailed  among 
vast  populations,  and  races  who  in  every  racial  charac- 
teristic were  incomparably  beyond  the  rude  races  of 
Northern  Europe,  and  it  has  had  long  continued  pos- 
session of  the  most  varied  and  fertile  territories,  but  it 
has  created  no  nation.  Its  central  and  representative 
power  stands  now  on  the  verge  of  Christendom,  a  totter- 
ing and  discordant  empire,  sustained  by  other  peoples,  and 
identified  with  a  race  and  degenerating  into  a  mere 
horde.1  The  same  absence  of  a  spirit  formative  of  a 
national  development  appears  in  Buddhism.  This  has 
consisted  only  with  the  power  of  a  race  or  an  empire. 
Thus  cultivated  Hindus  complain  of  the  want  of  a  power 
of  political  continuity,  a  power  which  the  continuation  of 
tradition  does  not  supply.  But  the  absence  of  a  formative 
political  principle  and  national  life  is  more  apparent  in 
Mohammedanism,  and  more  significant  from  its  immediate 
contact  with  the  historical  Christian  development. 

The  ancient  nations  stood  in  the  prophecy  of  the  coming 
of  the  Christ,  the  manifestation  of  the  divine  origin  and 
unity  and  affinity  of  humanity.  It  was  in  the  conditions 
of  a  moral  life,  that  is  through  conflict  and  sacrifice,  that 
the  later  nations  came  into  being,  whose  calling  was  in  the 
coming  of  Him  of  whom  the  ancient  nations  held  the 
prophecy.  The  church  in  its  unity  and  its  power  was  the 
realization  of  a  spiritual  kingdom  in  the  world.  Its  end 
was  universal.  There  was  in  it  the  assertion  of  the  divine 
origin  and  relations  and  destination  of  humanity.  It  was 

i  See  Goldwin  Smith,  Tfre  Empire,  pp.  228-225. 
24 


370  THE   NATION. 

in  identity  with  no  family  and  no  race.  It  was  the  church 
of  the  people.  The  spiritual  was  not  the  abstract,  and 
because  it  was  the  spiritual  it  was  not  therefore  the  unreal ; 
but  in  it  there  was  the  revelation  of  the  real,  —  the  foun- 
dation which  is  lying,  and  other  can  no  man  lay.  There 
was  the  manifestation  of  a  spiritual  kingdom  on  the  earth, 
in  the  unfolding  of  the  spiritual  powers  of  man.  The 
church  was  formed,  in  the  realization  of  a  spiritual  king- 
dom in  the  world,  in  the  new  ages.  It  was  the  witness 
to  the  redemption  of  the  spiritual  powers  of  man,  from  all 
that  had  dominion  over  them.  It  was  the  conflict  of  the 
Christ,  the  true  Lord  of  man,  in  whom  alone  is  freedom, 
with  principalities  and  powers  of  evil.  The  battle  of  the 
church  with  the  empire  in  the  Middle  Age  was  in  the  en- 
deavor toward  the  realization  of  a  spiritual  kingdom  on 
the  earth.  It  was  in  its  spiritual  freedom  that  the  nations 
were  called  into  being.  The  germ  of  their  life  was  hidden 
in  it.  In  the  redemption  of  the  spirit  of  man  there  was 
the  development  of  the  life  of  nations.  The  realization 
of  freedom  was  in  the  individual  and  in  the  nation, — 
the  realization  of  the  individual  personality,  and  the  moral 
personality  of  the  nation. 

The  power  which  was  central  in  the  world,  and  proceed- 
ing from  Rome  asserted  a  universal  dominion  over  all  men 
and  all  nations,  proclaiming  that  Caesar  is  king,  and  that 
humanity  is  to  recognize  no  other  and  higher,  was  to  fal] 
before  the  power  of  a  spiritual  kingdom,  in  which  was  the 
manifestation  of  the  eternal  king,  whose  coming  is  the 
deliverance  of  humanity.  The  church  rose  over  the  ruins 
of  the  empire,  which  had  striven  to  establish  a  universal 
dominion,  in  the  witness  to  the  deliverance  of  the  spiritual 
powers  of  man  in  the  Christ ;  in  this  was  the  sign  of  its 
conquest.  But  it  succeeded  to  claim  the  dominion  in 
itself,  which  it  had  denied  in  the  empire.  It  proclaimed 
no  longer  the  deliverance  of  man.  Then  when  it  as- 


THE  NATION   THE  INTEGRAL  ELEMENT  IN  HISTORY.       371 

sumed  in  and  for  itself  the  life  which  was  revealed  in  the 
Christ,  when  it  refused  to  recognize  a  spiritual  life  in 
men  and  in  nations,  it  became  itself  something  external. 
It  was  the  divine  order,  in  the  redemptive  process  of  his- 
tory, that  the  spiritual  should  become  manifest  as  the  real. 
The  realization  of  the  individual  personality,  and  of  the 
moral  personality  of  the  nation,  was  in  the  manifest  power 
of  the  redemption.  The  denial  of  the  realization  of  the 
spiritual  life  and  powers  of  the  individual  personality 
and  the  moral  personality  of  the  nation,  apart  from  the 
external  order  of  the  church,  involved  a  necessary  con- 
flict. The  power  of  Rome  in  its  denial  confronted  the 
realization  of  the  spiritual  life  of  man.  It  was  the  church 
which  assumed  to  stand  in  the  place  of  the  Christ,  and  it 
denied  an  immediate  relation  in  the  individual  and  the 
nation  in  their  freedom  and  their  life,  through  the  Christ, 
to  God.  It  became  the  contradiction  of  the  spiritual  and 
the  catholic,  itself  the  unspiritual  and  the  uncatholic.  It 
asserted  in  itself  a  dominion  over  men,  and  not  their  de- 
liverance. The  bonds  and  fetters  it  forged  were  so  subtle 
and  strong,  that  it  would  seem  that  -the  mightiest  spiritual 
effort  of  humanity  could  not  break  them,  and  no  power  in 
heaven  or  earth  could  rend  them. 

The  conflict  in  the  realization  of  spiritual  freedom,  be- 
comes then,  the  beginning  of  a  new  age.  The  central  fact 
in  the  Reformation  is  the  realization  of  personality,  its 
freedom,  its  duties,  its  rights,  in  the  individual  and  the  na- 
tion. It  is  the  conflict  of  the  individual  and  the  nation  in 
the  realization  of  their  being,  with  the  dominion  of  Rome 
as  the  force  of  principalities  and  powers  had  been  wrought 
in  that  to  crush'human  freedom.  The  witness  to  the  re- 
demption of  the  world,  the  sign  of  the  conquest  of  the 
Christ,  was  not  in  the  church  against  the  world,  but  it  was 
in  the  nations  of  Christendom  in  their  conflict  with  the 
church.  The  spiritual  conflict  was  the  conflict  of  the 
nations. 


372  THE  NATION. 

This  has  its  repeated  illustration  in  modern  history,  and 
appears  through  the  complications  of  its  events  and  the 
commingling  of  its  actors,  and  its  record  is  in  pages  which 
are  not  yet  closed.  The  nations  have  been  involved  in  a 
conflict  with  Rome  for  their  integral  unity  and  being.  The 
struggle  has  been  for  their  existence,  their  order,  their 
freedom.  There  is  none  as  it  has  sought  to  realize  its 
freedom,  that  has  been  exempt  from  the  secret  or  open 
assault  of  Rome.  Its  attack  has  taken  on  every  form,  and 
there  is  no  weapon  however  cruel,  and  no  device  however 
false,  which  it  has  not  used,  and  no  ally  however  evil, 
which  it  has  not  engaged.  It  has  appeared  on  every  field 
as  the  foe  of  the  life  and  liberties  of  nations.  The  record 
is  in  the  earlier  as  in  the  later  nations,  and  is  crowded  with 
its  evidence.  In  Italy  no  other  fact  has  wider  or  more 
patent  illustration.  It  is  there  indeed  more  complex  in  its 
phases,  since  upon  her  was  bestowed  the  fatal  gift  which 
wrung  from  Dante  his  sad  and  bitter  protest.  The 
result  is  summed  up  in  the  conclusion  of  a  recent  writer, 
44  The  papacy  has  been  the  eternal,  implacable  foe  of  Ital- 
ian independence  and  Italian  unity.  It  never  would  per- 
mit a  powerful  native  kingdom  to  unite  Italy."1  Mac- 
chiavelli,  who  inscribed  his  "  History  of  Florence  "  to 
Clement  VII.,  says,  "  all  the  wars  which  were  brought  upon 
Italy  by  the  barbarians,"  —  that  is,  foreigners,  —  uwere 
caused  mainly  by  the  Popes,  and  all  the  barbarians  who 
overrun  Italy  were  invited  in  by  them.  This  has  kept  Italy 
in  a  state  of  disunion  and  weakness."  In  France  the  con- 
flict appears  in  varying  forms,  through  century  after  cen- 
tury. The  life  of  the  nation  was  maintained  by  none  with 
a  higher  purpose,  and  its  powers  were  guarded  by  none 
with  a  profounder  spirit  than  by  the  holiest  of  her  kings, 
Louis  IX.  The  edict,  in  the  name  of  "  Louis,  by  the 
Grace  of  God,  King  of  the  French,"  has  been  called  "  the 
great  charter  of  independence  to  the  Gallican  Church ; " 

1  Milman's  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  i.  p.  477. 


THE  NATION   THE  INTEGRAL  ELEMENT  IN  HISTORY.      373 

and  in  its  course,  it  has  been  said  of  it  that,  "  seized  by  the 
Parliaments,  defended,  interpreted,  extended  by  the -law- 
yers, it  became  the  barrier  against  which  the  encroach- 
ments of  the  ecclesiastical  power  were  destined  to  break ; 
nor  was  it  swept  away  until  a  stronger  barrier  had  arisen 
in  the  unlimited  power  of  the  French  crown."  The  issue 
was  never  more  clear  than  in  the  long  drawn  battle  of 
Boniface  and  Philip  the  Fair.  It  has  been  continued  by 
her  Crown  and  Parliaments  and  Courts ;  it  has  suffered 
interruption  neither  in  monarchical  nor  republican  epochs  ; 
it  underlay  the  prolonged  controversy  of  the  canon  and  the 
civil  lawyers ;  it  was  to  justify  the  language  of  a  philo- 
sophic historian,  —  "  the  Gallican  liberties  are  the  standing 
anti-Pope."  In  England,  the  conflict  of  Rome  with  the 
nation,  through  all  her  better  centuries,  has  been  borne 
in  the  front  of  her  battles.  It  has  summoned  her  Kings 
and  people  to  the  field  more  often  than  any  other  cause. 
The  strife  of  the  Tudor  age,  which  made  the  mightiest 
of  her  kings,  Henry  VIII.,  "  the  only  supreme  head  in 
earth  of  the  Church  of  England,"  and  the  wars  of  the  fif- 
teenth and  sixteenth  centuries,  whatever  the  immediate 
form  they  took,  were  the  battle  of  the  nations  against  the 
universal  domination  of  Rome,  and  in  them  the  nations 
were  contending  for  their  very  being  and  freedom.  The 
wars  of  the  Low  Countries,  of  Elizabeth,  and  of  William 
of  Orange,  which,  so  frequently  renewed,  closed  for  at 
least  one  epoch  on  the  field  of  Blenheim,  involved  this  for 
their  actual  issue.  The  alliance  of  Rome  against  the  na- 
tions was  with  imperialism.  It  is  with  that  her  power  has 
combined,  and  she  has  wielded  that  to  crush  nations.  It 
is  thus  that  she  found  her  instrument  in  Philip  II.,  in 
Louis  XIV.,  in  Napoleon  III.  As  Spain,  in  her  imperial 
age,  sought  to  fasten  the  domination  of  Rome  upon  the 
nations,  in  her  swift  decline  the  fetters  she  strove  to  rivet 
upon  them  were  drawn  more  closely  upon  her,  and  France 
has  fortified  within  and  against  herself  the  power  she  went 


374  THE  NATION. 

to  Italy  to  sustain.  It  is  this  conflict  which  has  never  been 
absent  from  the  thought  of  the  greater  modern  statesmen, 
as  William  of  Orange  and  Cromwell.1  In  Germany  the  con- 
flict has  been  more  apparent  with  the  German  nation.  The 
work  of  Luther  was  the  awakening  of  a  national  spirit. 
The  power  of  the  Electors  was  his  constant  support.  The 
issue  is  continued  in  the  most  recent  events.  The  alliance 
of  Rome  with  imperialism  in  Austria  has  been  always  in 
antagonism  to  the  unity  of  Germany  and  its  freedom. 
The  battle  of  Sadowa  was  the  triumph  of  Protestantism, 
the  triumph  of  the  German  nation,  the  Germany  of  Lu- 
ther and  Hegel.  Its  immediate  result  was  the  widest  dis- 
aster to  Rome. 

In  every  nation  where  Rome  has  a  vestige  of  authority, 
the  conflict  appears.  The  irreconcilable  hostility  of  Rome 
to  the  being  of  nations  has  never  had  more  open  avowal 
than  in  this  century.2  In  Italy  it  is  still  the  unceasing  an- 
tagonist to  the  nation.  It  does  not  acknowledge  the  exist- 
ence of  the  nation  of  Italy,  and  recruits  an  army  out  of 

1  "  The  conservation  of  that,  '  namely',  our  national  being,  is  first  to  be  viewed 
with  respect  to  those  that  seek  to  undo  it,  and  so  make  it  not  to  be."     "  What- 
ever could  serve  the  glory  of  God  and  the  interests  of  his  people,  they  see  more 
eminently  in  this  nation  than  in  all  the  nations  in  the  world ;  this  is  the  common 
ground  of  the  common  enmity  entertained  against  the  prosperity  of  our  nation, 
against  the  very  being  of  it.     All  the  honest  interests,  all  the  interests  of  Prot- 
estants in  Germany,  Denmark,  etc.,  are  the  same  as  yours.    Therefore  the  dan- 
ger is  from  the  common  enemy  abroad,  who  is  the  head  of  the  Papal  interest." 
—  Cromwell's  Letters  and  Speeches,  vol.  iii.  p.  150. 

2  In  the  Encyclical  of  December  6,  1864,  Pius  claims  the  exemption  of  the 
clergy  from  the  authority  of  secular  tribunals,  and  asserts  a  divine  sanction  in 
"  refusing  to  permit  their  cases  to  be  subject  to  the  judgment  of  the  latter."    The 
traditions  of  ecclesiastical  supremacy  are  not  forgotten  for  one  moment,  and  it  is 
asserted  that  "  rulers  are  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  church,"  and  even 
that  "in  the  state, internal  municipal  laws  are  involved  in  the  same  subjection." 
The  necessary  antagonism  to  modern  civilization  is  indicated,  and  the  syllabus 
in  its  close  deems  it  a  fatal  error,  that  "  Romanus  Pontifex  potest  ac  debet  cum 
progressu,  cum  liberalismo,  et  cum  recenti  civilitate  sese  reconciliare,  et  com- 
ponere."  —  Pii,  P.  P.  IX.,  Syllab.,  December  6,  1864. 

Milman,  in  his  conclusion  on  the  condition  of  the  Latin  Church,  says:  "The 
clergy  in  general,  there  were  noble  exceptions,  were  first  the  subjects  of  th« 
Pope,  then  the  subjects  of  the  temporal  sovereign."  —  History  of  Latin  Christian. 
ify,  vol.  viii.  p.  158. 


THE  NATION  THE  INTEGRAL  ELEMENT  IN   HISTORY.      375 

all  lands,  and  its  drum  beats  the  roll-call  of  a  motley 
crowd,  and  once  more,  in  alliance  with  imperialism  and 
with  foreign  soldiers,  its  flag  is  borne  before  them  to  battle 
with  the  people  of  Italy.  In  America,  with  some  eminent 
individual  exceptions,  the  influence  of  Rome  was  with 
confederatism,  and  while  it  is  not  clear  whether  the  act 
was  in  her  spiritual  or  temporal  capacity,  nor  what  guise 
was  worn,  Rome  was  the  only  power  to  recognize  the  con- 
federacy. In  Mexico  and  the  South  American  Republics, 
it  is  the  unceasing  foe  of  their  unity  and  freedom.  In 
every  sphere  of  diplomacy  its  emissaries  are  engaged,  and 
its  policy  seeks  supremacy.  It  is  the  so-called  clerical 
party  in  these  unhappy  and  disordered  states,  that  is  al- 
ways in  league  with  secession  ;  there  is  no  power  that 
works  so  secretly  through  municipalities  and  provinces, 
and  in  combinations  with  factions  and  parties,  to  subvert 
the  whole  to  its  own  ends.  It  is  the  foe  in  all  to  their 
progress  and  education  and  order  and  freedom. 

This  antagonism  of  Roman  ecclesiasticism  to  the  nation 
is  involved  in  its  necessary  postulate.  The  domination  it 
has  assumed,  its  authority,  its  scope,  cannot  consist  with 
the  realization  of  moral  freedom.  The  Reformation  was  in 
the  realization  of  freedom.  There  was  in  Protestant  his- 
tory the  development  of  a  positive  principle.  It  was  not 
a  merely  negative  movement,  only  the  protest  against  cer- 
tain errors  and  abuses,  but  there  was  the  manifestation  of 
moral  freedom,  — the  positive  realization  of  personality  in 
the  individual  and  the  nation,1  —  the  life,  the  being  of 
each  as  existent  in  its  origin  in  God,  and  in  its  unity  and 
continuity  derivative  only  from  God.  The  great  postulate 
of  Protestantism  is  the  assertion  of  the  immediate  relation 
of  the  human  spirit  to  the  Christ,  and  between  the  human 
soul  and  Him,  there  can  stand  neither  priest  nor  book.  It 

1  "  The  principle  of  moral  individualism  stamps  the  movement  with  its  char- 
acteristic impress. 

"  It  was  the  reality  of  moral  freedom  in  Christ,  that  more  than  all  else  gave 
triumph  to  the  Reformation."  —  Tullach,  Leaders  of  the  Reformation,  p.  135. 


376  THE  NATION. 

is  the  assertion  in  the  life  of  humanity  in  history,  not  of  a 
formal  but  a  real  theocracy,  —  the  divine  order  of  the 
world  in  the  Christendom  of  nations. 

This  antagonism  is  necessary  also  in  the  assumption  of 
Roman  ecclesiasticism,  since  it  denies  to  the  individual  and 
to  the  nation  a  real  and  integral  moral  being,  —  the  reali- 
zation of  a  divine  vocation  in  the  moral  order  of  the  world 
—  which  is  not  formulated  through  it.  The  individual  and 
the  nation  apart  from  the  church,  are  regarded  as  in  ider.- 
tity  with  the  world,  —  only  the  kingdoms  of  this  world,  — 
and  the  church  will  concede  to  them,  therefore,  no  spiritual 
life  or  powers,  no  real  freedom,  no  fulfillment  of  a  divine 
vocation,  in  conscious  obedience  to  a  divine  will.  It  as- 
sumes the  working  of  the  divine  energy,  and  the  fulfill- 
.rnent  of  the  divine  purpose  in  itself  alone,  and  in  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  nation  only  as  formulated  through  it,  and 
the  moral — that  is  in  its  definite  Christian  realization,  the 
moral  order  of  history,  apart  from  itself  is  unreal,  only  the 
legal,  the  unspiritual  condition  of  man.  It  assumes  that 
in  and  through  itself  alone  the  redemptive  life  is  formed, 
and  in  it  alone  is  manifest  the  power  of  the  redemption 
and  the  power  of  the  resurrection.  It  alone  is  built  upon 
"  the  foundation  which  is  lying ; "  and  itself  external,  all 
which  is  external  to  it,  is  a  baseless  structure.  It  alone 
stands  in  the  living  and  eternal  will,  and  that  only  has  a 
real  and  a  moral  continuity  which  is  formed  in  it.  It  will 
not  concede  that  in  the  individual  and  the  nation  as  separ- 
ate from  itself,  there  is  wrought  the  work  of  righteousness 
on  the  earth.  Therefore  when  Protestantism  asserts  that 
the  nation  has  the  condition  of  its  being  in  righteousness, 
and  in  righteousness  alone  its  strength  and  exaltation,  and 
that  its  unity  and  continuity  is  only  in  the  will  of  One, 
who  will  establish  righteousness  on  the  earth,  and  its  free- 
dom in  the  obedience  to  that  will,  and  its  being  and  re- 
sponsibilities in  an  immediate  relation  to  that,  —  these 
truths  Roman  ecclesiasticism,  in  its  primary  assumption, 
denies  and  discards. 


THE   NATION   THE   INTEGRAL   ELEMENT   IN    HISTORY.      377 

The  inevitable  character  of  this  antagonism  in  Roman 
ecclesiasticism  appears  also  in  the  fact  that  it  will  not  con- 
cede a  real  and  immediate  relation  in  the  individual  or  the 
nation  to  God,  —  to  God  as  manifest  in  the  Christ,  —  nor 
that  their  life  and  personality  are  immediately  and  only 
derivative  from  Him.  The  life  of  the  individual,  the 
moral  life  as  definitely  Christian,  it  asserts  to  be  mediated 
and  formulated  in  it,  and  that  the  nation  is  only  the  prov- 
ince of  physical  forces,  the  combination  of  material  inter- 
ests, a  secular  kingdom,  in  whose  course  there  is  only  what 
it  calls  a  phenomenal  morality.1  It  will  not  admit  the 
divine  guidance  of  the  people  in  its  history,  and  holding 
the  light  only  in  itself,  it  discerns  rio*t  the  presence  which 
goes  before  the  march  of  the  people.  It  does  not  allow  in 
the  nation  a  means  or  agency  of  actual  good,  nor  that  it 
derives  its  wisdom  and  courage  and  understanding  only 
from  God,  nor  that  its  obligation  is  to  no  other  power  on 
earth,  but  only  to  Him.  It  will  not  admit  in  it  a  vocation, 
whose  duty  cannot  be  transferred  to  another.  In  its  as- 
sumption, the  nation  is  not  a  power  in  the  realization  of 
the  divine  kingdom  in  the  world,  but  in  its  origin  and  end 
is  in  alienation  from  it,  —  only  a  kingdom  of  this  world. 

The  church,  in  this  conception,  comes  to  regard  the 
being,  the  unity  and  the  freedom  of  the  nation  with  in- 
difference, when  it  is  not  its  avowed  antagonist.  The 
nation  is  regarded  at  the  most  as  only  formal  and  abstract, 
and  existent  in  indifference  to  right  and  wrong,  and  the 
church  is  not  to  stoop  to  what  it  represents  as  the  secular 

1  "  The  Catholic  confession,  although  sharing  the  Christian  name  with  the 
Protestant,  does  not  concede  to  the  state  an  inherent  justice  and  morality  —  * 
concession  which  in  the  Protestant  principle  is  fundamental.  This  severance 
of  the  political  morality,  which  is  necessary  to  the  being  of  the  state  from  its 
natural  connection,  is  characteristic  of  that  religion,  since  it  does  not  recognize 
justice  and  righteousness  as  something  integral  and  substantial.  But  thus  iso- 
lated and  torn  away  from  their  inner  centre,  the  sanctuary  of  conscience  which 
is  their  last  refuge,  and  the  still  retreat  where  religion  has  its  abode,  the  princi- 
ples and  institutions  of  political  legislation  are  destitute  of  a  real  unity  in  the 
Bame  measure  in  which  they  are  compelled  to  remain  abstract  and  undefined." 
—  Hegel,  Phiksqphie  der  Geschichte,  p.  64. 


378  THE  NATION. 

aims  in  the  life  of  humanity.  In  its  view,  the  unity  and 
continuity  of  the  nation  in  which  the  fathers  are  turned 
to  the  children  and  the  children  to  the  fathers,  the  author- 
ity of  government  and  the  reverence  for  law,  and  the 
punishment  of  crime  on  the  earth,  and  the  triumph  over 
oppression,  over  principalities  and  powers  which  have  held 
dominion  over  men,  involve  no  immediate  and  divine  obli- 
gation. The  aim  of  the  statesman  is  no  longer  the  con- 
formance  of  legislation  to  a  divine  law  of  righteousness, 
and  the  end  of  the  state  is  no  longer  the  fulfillment  of  an 
order  which  he  did  not  create,  but  whose  principle  he  is  to 
obey.  The  faith  of  the  people,  the  fulfillment  of  its  work 
through  all  the  trials*  of  its  years,  the  very  devotion  and 
sacrifice  of  its  children,  the  wisdom  and  courage  of  its 
leaders,  have  no  real  moral  significance,  but  are  only  the 
continuance  of  a  sacrilegious  course,  the  circumstance  of  a 
profane  history.1 

1  This  is  also  the  attitude  of  many  of  the  sects,  and  the  conclusion  of  their 
logic,  when  it  does  not  avoid  its  premise.  A  recent  writer  says:  "The  secular 
career  of  man  is  a  violation  of  sacred  obligations  and  of  a  divinely  established 
order.  In  reference  to  the  divine  idea  and  intent,  it  is  a  sacrilege  —  well  denom- 
inated profane  —  the  history  of  the  world  as  the  opposite  and  antagonist  of  the 
church,  only  the  ordinary  workings  of  the  human  mind,  and  such  products  as 
are  confessedly  in  its  competence  to  originate,  etc."  Then  the  construction  of 
the  Nicene  formula  is  described  in  Its  parallel,  in  the  sseculum  necessary  to  it, 
"  As  long  a  time  as  was  required  for  pagan  Rome  to  conquer  and  subjugate  the 
Italian  tribes,  and  to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  nationality  that  was  to  last  a  mil- 
lennium in  its  own  particular  form;  as  long  a  time  as  was  required  for  the  thor- 
ough mixing  and  fusion  of  British,  Saxon,  and  Norman  elements  into  that  mod- 
ern national  character  which  in  the  Englishman  and  Anglo-American  is  perhaps 
destined  to  mould  and  rule  the  future,  more  than  even  Rome  has  the  past." 
Then  the  parallel  of  the  Nicene  formula  is  continued.  "  The  one  is  metaphysical, 
the  other  is  political  and  relates  to  the  rise  and  formation  of  merely  secular  sover- 
eignties, exceedingly  impressive  to  the  natural  mind  and  dazzling  to  the  carnal 
eye;  these  metaphysical  victories  secured  a  correct  faith,  etc."  —  Shedd's  History 
of  Christian  Doctrine,  vol.  i.  p.  18,  p.  374.  This  is  the  conception,  in  which,  in 
the  consistent  and  necessary  sequence  of  its  premise,  national  life  is  appre- 
hended. 

It  is  evident  that  the  character  of  the  appeal  to  the  eye  is  consequent  upon 
the  content  of  the  object;  but  there  has  never  been  in  the  life  of  nations  an 
immediate  appeal  to  the  carnal  eye  to  compare  with  that  made  in  the  centuries 
included  in  this  parallel,  by  the  visible  church. 

There  is  the  assumotion  in  this  description  also  of  the  apprehension  of  truth 


THE  NATION  THE  INTEGRAL  ELEMENT  IN  HISTORY.      379 

There  is  a  so-called  catholic  church,  beyond  the  pale 
of  Rome,  which  assumes  the  same.  If  a  nation  is  strug- 
gling for  its  unity  and  being  against  forces  of  division 
and  dissolution,  it  is  a  subject  of  no  moral  concernment. 
The  life  of  the  nation  and  the  sacred  obligations  of  its 
citizenship,  which  so  inspire  common  men  that  they  will 
die  for  them,  and  pass  those  gates  of  holy  and  willing  sac- 
rifice with  the  sacrament  of  the  nation  upon  their  lips,  it 
regards  only  with  moral  indifference.  If  a  people  in  a 
great  crisis  are  redeemed  from  slavery,  it  sees  not  the 
glory  of  their  deliverance.  It  heeds  not  the  roll  of  the 
waves  parted  by  the  right  hand  of  Majesty  on  high,  but 
asks  only  that  it  still  may  catch  the  murmur  of  waters, 
breaking  on  the  shores  of  ancient  wrong.  It  repeats  its 
protest  against  sedition,  conspiracy,  and  rebellion,  but  to 
their  reality  its  conscience  is  dead.  It  asks  in  the  litany 
of  human  hopes  and  sorrows,  for  the  unity  of  all  nations, 
but  for  those  who  hold  the  unity  of  the  nation  as  a  divine 

only  as  a  proposition.  It  is  represented  in  its  scientific  precision  as  an  abstract 
formula,  and  the  contrast  is  with  the  real  conflict  of  history.  The  analogy  in 
the  centuries  of  the  construction  of  this  formula  may  have  another  presentation. 
This  metaphysical  speculation  never  had  more  exclusive  control  of  the  thoughts 
of  men,  nor  more  regard  for  its  scientific  precision  than  in  the  city  of  Constan- 
tine,  under  Heraclius,  in  the  beginning  of  the  seventh  century.  It  passed  on  to 
the  controversy  as  to  the  two  wills;  but  the  impressiveness  of  its  themes  did  not 
affect  the  lives  of  men.  It  was  the  sign  of  the  division  of  the  schools,  it  sepa- 
rated society  in  the  avenues  of  fashion,  it  started  the  mob  and  tumult  in  the 
streets,  it  was  the  signal  of  parties  in  miserable  circus-fights;  but  it  awakened 
no  moral  energy.  It  was  apprehended  only  as  a  dogma  —  an  abstraction  —  and 
with  no  reference  to  the  actual  condition  of  men.  It  was  a  strife  only  measured 
by  the  scientific  accuracy  of  terms,  in  which  a  dogma  was  held.  It  was  then 
that  their  foundations  on  which  they  built  —  the  foundations  of  a  system,  but 
not  of  a  living  Person  whose  Will  had  been  revealed  to  men  —  were  shaken 
by  the  coming  of  a  conqueror,  as  a  voice  from  the  desert.  It  has  been  said 
by  an  historical  writer,  "  his  words  and  deeds  carried  out  the  moral  of  the  previ- 
ous history.  Mohammed  proclaimed  an  actual  God,  to  men  who  were  disputing 
concerning  his  nature  and  attributes.  Mohammed  affirmed  that  there  was  an 
actual  will,  before  which  the  will  of  man  must  bow  down.  It  was  a  tremendous 
proclamation.  Philosophy  shrinks  and  shrivels  before  it.  All  ethical  specula- 
tions are  concluded  by  the  one  maxim,  —  that  God's  commands  are  to  be  obeyed ; 
all  metaphysical  speculations  are  silenced  by  the  shout  of  a  host,  "  He  is,  and 
we  are  sent  to  establish  his  authority  ofer  the  earth." 


380  THE  NATION. 

gift,  it  is  silent  and  offers  only  the  drowsy  opiates  of 
this  world  that  drug  the  spirits  of  men.  Its  hierarchy 
will  not  soil  itself  with  these  common  aims,  although  St. 
Peter  could  ask  with  longing  for  the  time  of  the  resto- 
ration of  Israel,  and  St.  John  could  trace  in  the  historical 
order  of  the  nation,  the  symbols  of  eternal  things,  and  St. 
Paul  could  dwell  upon  its  historical  events  as  the  sacra- 
mems  of  the  divine  presence,  and  the  voices  of  Prophets 
have  been  lifted  in  exultation  at  the  nation's  deliverance, 
or  burdened  with  its  sorrow  since  the  world  began.  It 
wearies  of  the  symbols  of  the  prophetic  office  when  the 
reality  is  gone.  It  concerns  itself  with  a  ritual  and  pro- 
cessions, but  they  are  no  longer  the  ritual,  nor  the  proces- 
sions of  a  people.  It  finds  no  longer  a  significance  in  the 
name  of  Protestant,  since  it  has  no  place  in  the  great  pro- 
cess of  Protestant  history. 

Whether  the  United  States  will  be  involved  in  an  im- 
mediate conflict  with  Rome,  lies  in  her  future.  While 
there  are  noble,  but  still  few  exceptions,  her  unity  and 
education  and  freedom  will  meet  in  Roman  Catholicism,  it 
may  be  a  guarded  and  often  concealed,  but  an  unceasing 
antagonist.  Those  who  see  in  the  course  of  the  Christian 
centuries  only  the  development  of  a  dogma,  and  regard 
Protestantism  as  an  intellectual  conflict,  can  find  no  ground 
of  apprehension.  M.  Guizot  turns  from  speculations  on 
the  essence  of  Christianity,  to  advocate  a  confederacy 
in  Italy,  and  the  maintenance  of  the  temporal  power  of 
the  Popes ;  but  to  those  for  whom  the  conflict  of  so  many 
centuries  has  a  deeper  reality,  the  ecclesiasticism  of  Rome 
bears  another  character.  Milton  was  the  statesman  of  a 
greater  age,  and  was  a  wider  scholar,  and  of  fairer  sym- 
pathies, but  for  him  it  was  "  the  old  red  dragon."  It  was 
to  be  met  by  the  nation  in  a  struggle  of  life  and  death. 
And  the  nation  will  not  maintain  its  unity  or  its  being  if 
it  meet  it  only  as  a  material  force.  The  church  will  not 
give  place  to  an  atheistic  state,  nor  to  a  material  civilizsu 


THE  NATION  THE  INTEGRAL  ELEMENT  IN   HISTORY.      381 

tion.     The  end  of  history  is  not  attained,  and  the  destina- 
tion of  humanity  is  not  realized  in  that. 

The  nation  can  meet  the  forces  with  which  it  has  to 
contend  only  as  it  realizes  its  own  moral  being,  and  recog-  // 
nizes  its  origin  and  end  in  God.  If  it  be  held  in  a  merely 
material  conception,  it  can  bring  no  strength  to  the  real 
battle  of  history,  where  moral  forces  contend.  If  it  be 
regarded  as  only  formal,  it  will  be  broken  by  that  held  in 
a  subtler  bond.  The  nation  is  called  to  a  conflict  in  every 
age,  where  the  result  does  not  depend  upon  the  strength 
of  its  chariots,  nor  the  swiftness  of  its  horses.  It  is  to  con- 
tend with  weapons  wrought  not  alone  in  earthly  forges  — 
it  is  to  go  forth  clothed  with  celestial  armor,  and  of  celes- 
tial temper.  It  is  to  fulfill  a  divine  calling.  It  is  to  keep 
a  holy  purpose.  It  is  to  enter  the  battle  for  righteous- 
ness and  freedom.  It  is  to  contend  through  suffering 
and  sacrifice,  with  faith  in  the  redemption  of  humanity, 
for  the  rights  of  humanity,  — rights  given  to  it  by  Him 
whose  image  it  bears. 

NOTE.  —  The  morality  of  a  people,  and  so  also  its  politics,  will  always  corre- 
spond to  its  actual  theology,  and  will  be  but  the  sequence  of  that.  The  assertion 
that  men  are  saved,  not  by  faith  in  a  divine  person,  but  by  faith  in  a  dogma  or  a 
system  of  dogmas,  induces  a  formalism,  which  is  reflected  in  politics,  in  the 
notion  that  a  political  form  or  dogma  will  save  the  nation.  Thus  we  are  told 
as  before  by  the  theological  doctors,  now  by  the  political  doctrinaires,  not  thut 
the  people  are  saved  by  faith  in  God  and  his  righteousness,  but  that  the  only 
safety  is  in  the  constitution,  inclusive  of  a  certain  scientific  formula,  defining 
the  correct  relation  of  the  states. 

The  discussion  as  to  the  formal  recognition  of  God  in  the  written  or  enacted 
constitution  has  scarcely  a  better  ground.  In  the  historical  or  providential  — 
the  real  and  unwritten  constitution,  —  it  is  the  very  condition  of  the  being  of  the 
nation.  But  the  written  or  enacted  constitution  defines  only  the  formal  or- 
ganization, and  relations  of  the  powers  of  the  state,  and  then  also  it  is  an 
instrument  of  law,  and  subject  to  amendment,  etc.,  and  the  divine  recognition 
might  be  required  with  the  same  propriety  in  every  legislative  enactment. 


CHAPTER    XX. 

THE    NATION    THE    BEGINNING    AND    GOAL    OF    HISTORY. 

THE  aim  of  political  science  is  the  presentation  of  the 
nation,  as  it  is  in  its  necessary  conception.  Its  object  is 
to  define  it  in  that  unity  and  law  which  alone  is  the  con- 
dition of  science.  This  necessitates  an  inner  and  critical 
justification  of  its  representation. 

The  nation  is  organic,  and  has  therefore  the  unity  of  an 
organism,  and  in  its  continuity  persists  in  and  through  the 
generations  of  men ;  it  is  a  moral  organism,  it  is  formed 
of  persons  in  the  relations  in  which  there  is  the  realization 
of  personality,  it  is  not  limited  to  the  necessary  sequence 
of  a  physical  development,  but  transcends  a  merely  phys- 
ical condition,  and  in  it  there  is  the  realization  of  freedom 
and  the  manifestation  of  rights ;  it  consists  in  the  moral 
order  of  the  world,  and  its  vocation  is  in  the  fulfillment  of 
the  divine  purpose  in  humanity  in  history. 

The  nation  as  it  exists  in  its  necessary  conception,  is  the 
Christian  nation. 

The  Book  which  illustrates  from  the  beginning  of  his- 
tory the  divine  purpose,  and  the  divine  order  in  the  world, 
has  been  and  is  the  book  of  the  life  of  nations.  It  is  not 
a  book  which  belongs  to  the  childhood  of  the  race  and  out- 
grown is  to  be  left  with  stories  and  pictures  to  children  ;  it 
is  not  a  book  of  abstractions,  to  be  shaped  in  the  systems 
of  schools ;  it  does  not  hold  the  life  of  nations  in  indiffer- 
ence, as  do  the  hierarchs  of  ancient  and  modern  religions, 
to  find  their  sanctity  in  their  external  isolation.  It  con- 
tains in  the  order  of  history  from  its  beginning  to  its  close, 
the  revelation  of  the  origin  and  unity  of  the  nation,  and 


THE   BEGINNING   AND   GOAL   OF   HISTORY.  383 

the  law  of  its  being.  It  is  the  record  of  the  revelation 
through  history  of  the  divine  economy.  It  is  not  to  con- 
strue the  polity  of  one  age,  but  of  the  ages.  There  is  the 
unfolding  of  principles  which  are  deeper  than  a  formal 
order  and  a  formal  organization.  They  are  not  concluded 
in  the  transient  and  local.  In  the  succession  of  events 
they  do  not  become  isolated,  and  in  the  changes  of  time 
they  do  not  become  obsolete.  They  are  the  revelation  of 
an  authority  which  no  tyrant  can  suspend,  and  no  anarchy 
subvert.1 

This  has  its  clearest  assertion  from  those  who  have  been 
called  to  their  work  in  the  foundations  of  nations  ;  it  has 
been,  in  the  crises  of  nations,  their  strength  and  their  stay, 
and  its  words  have  wrought  with  the  power  of  a  divine  in- 
spiration in  the  spirit  of  the  people.  There  is  in  the  liter- 

1  There  is  much  that  is  suggestive  in  the  comparison  of  those  great  contem- 
poraries—  Spinoza  and  Hobbes;  and  it  has  been  often  traced,  and  in  many  ways; 
but  it  is  in  no  respect  more  significant  than  in  the  consideration  which  they  give 
in  their  political  writings  to  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  In  their  political  inquiry, 
neither  of  them  can  avoid  the  fact  of  the  wide  and  continuous  influence  of  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures  upon  politics,  and  each  sets  honestly  to  work  to  account  for 
it,  and  to  ascertain  some  principle  of  reconciliation  between  them  and  their  own 
theories.  There  is  reflected  in  each  the  thought  of  schools  and  sects  in  this  age, 
who  hold  their  names  in  distrust. 

The  result  of  their  attempt  to  reconcile  their  political  conceptions  with  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures,  is  stated  by  a  recent  historian  of  philosophy:  "All  the  in- 
genuity and  courageous  dogmatism  of  Hobbes,  could  not  hinder  him  from  ap- 
pearing awkward  and  sophistical  when  he  tried  to  reconcile  his  theory  of  society 
and  of  government,  with  that  which  represents  God  as  constituting  the  family; 
God  as  forming  the  people  whom  He  had  delivered  from  bondage  into  a  nation; 
God  as  himself  governing  it,  whatever  subordinate  instruments  —  priests,  kings, 
prophets  —  He  employs;  God  as  preparing  them  for  the  manifestation  of  a  divine 
kingdom,  wherein  men  should  be  governed  by  a  Father,  be  united  to  each  other 
in  a  Mediator,  by  an  in-dwelling  Spirit. 

"  Spinoza  is  still  more  embarrassed,  precisely  because  he  has  more  sense  of  a 
divine  economy,  and  is  less  able  to  divest  himself  of  early  associations.  The 
strange  dream  of  a  people,  persuaded  by  their  law-giver  to  regard  God  as  their 
King,  and  to  bind  themselves  under  a  covenant  to  Him,  has  to  be  maintained 
under  all  difficulties  that  he  may  show  how  peculiar  the  Hebrew  state  was,  how 
little  it  can  be  a  model  for  other  states,  and  yet  what  lessons  it  may  teach  them 
respecting  the  dangers  of  monarchical,  still  more  of  priestly  or  prophetical  usur- 
pation. Having  once  got  rid  of  the  primary  idea  of  the  Jewish  state,  he  could 
have  no  difficulty  whatever  in  disjoining  its  history  from  the  history  of  all  other 
nations."  — Maurice,  History  of  ModernJPhilosophy,  p.  410. 


384  THE  NATION. 

ature  of  the  world  no  other  expression  of  the  ground  and 
being  of  the  nation,  as  it  is  found  here  in  the  beginning 
of  history ;  —  no  other  expression  of  the  glory  and  honor 
of  the  nation  as  it  is  unfolded  here  in  the  goal  of  history. 
Its  words  have  been  kept,  — 

"  As  better  teaching, 
The  solid  rules  of  civil  government, 
In  their  majestic,  unaffected  style, 
Than  all  the  oratory  of  Greece  and  Rome ; 
In  them  is  plainest  taught  and  easiest  learnt, 
What  makes  a  nation  happy  and  keeps  it  so, 
What  ruins  kingdoms  and  lays  cities  flat." 

There  has  been  no  more  constant  recognition  of  its 
political  principle  than  is  repeated  in  the  writings  of  the 
fathers  and  founders  of  the  republic.  In  their  confession 
of  the  divine  presence  and  the  divine  guidance,  there  is  an 
accordance  as  of  the  psalms  of  a  nation.  The  recognition 
of  the  origin  and  continuity  of  the  nation  in  God,  is  re- 
peated in  the  inaugurals  of  the  earlier  Presidents.  It  is 
not  the  utterance  of  empty  phrases  in  some  indifferent  mo- 
ment, it  is  spoken  in  the  hour  of  the  assumption  of  the 
most  sacred  trust,  the  imposition  of  the  most  sacred  obliga- 
tion. The  words  of  its  great  citizen  Franklin,  which  reach 
to  the  foundations  of  political  thought,  in  the  most  critical 
hour,  in  the  Convention  of  the  Representatives  of  the  peo- 
ple for  the  formation  of  the  constitution,  were,  "  We  have 
been  answered  in  the  sacred  writings,  that  'except  the 
Lord  build  the  house,  they  labor  in  vain  that  build  it.'  I 
firmly  believe  this ;  and  I  also  firmly  believe  this,  that 
without  his  concurring  aid,  we  shall  succeed  in  this  polit- 
ical building  no  better  than  the  builders  of  Babel.  We 
shall  be  divided  by  our  little  partial  local  interests ;  our 
projects  will  be  confounded ;  and  we  ourselves  shall  become 
a  reproach  and  a  by-word  down  to  future  ages." ]  Presi- 
dent Washington  said  in  his  first  inaugural,  "  No  people 
can  be  bound  to  adore  the  hand  which  conducts  the  affairs 

i  The  Convention,  June  28, 1787. 


THE  BEGINNING  AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  385 

of  men  more  than  the  people  of  the  United  States."  l 
There  is  no  language  deeper  in  its  analogy  than  that  of 
President  Jefferson  at  the  close  of  his  inaugural,  "  I  shall 
need,  too,  the  favor  of  that  Being,  in  whose  hands  we  all 
are,  who  led  our  fathers  as  Israel  of  old  from  their  native 
land,  and  planted  them  in  a  country  flowing  with  all  the 
comforts  and  the  necessaries  of  life  ;  who  has  covered  our 
infancy  with  his  providence,  and  our  riper  years  with  his 
wisdom  and  power,  and  to  whose  goodness  I  ask  you  to 
join  in  supplications  with  me." 2  The  last  inaugural  of 
President  Lincoln  was  the  unbroken  expression  of  the  spirit 
of  these  Scriptures,  and  its  whole  thought  was  gathered  up 
in  their  words,  in  the  recognition  of  one  who  will  establish 
righteousness  on  the  earth,  "  whose  judgments  are  right- 
eous and  just."3  And  if  there  be  in  the  beginning  of 
nations  a  prescience,  the  words  on  the  lips  of  the  Pilgrims 
were  not  of  a  state  formed  in  the  poor  figment  of  the  social 
contract,  nor  a  condition  in  which  there  was  merely  a  neg- 
ative freedom  where  conscience  was  released  from  all  ob- 
ligation, but  they  were  of  a  life  in  which  these  principles 
become  a  living  power.4 

There  is,  however,  a  preconception  in  two  opposite 
forms,  each  of  which,  while  recognizing  in  these  Scriptures 
the  representation  of  the  nation,  limits  it  in  its  principle 
and  its  end. 

1  President  Washington's  Inaugural,  April  30, 1789. 

2  President  Jefferson's  Inaugural,  March  4,  1805. 
8  President  Lincoln's  Inaugural,  March  4, 1864. 

4  See  Lectures  by  members  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  1869 
The  Aims  and  Purposes  of  the  Founders  of  the  Massachusetts  Colony,  by  Rev 
George  E.  Ellis,  pp.  50,  55,  63.  This  statement  of  the  object  of  the  founders  of 
Massachusetts  has  a  singular  historical  value.  It  is  the  true  Puritan  tradition, 
and  beyond  the  empty  theories  of  freedom  and  law  and  the  state,  which  a  later 
age  sought  to  assume  as  historical  in  its  stead.  The  law  of  suffrage,  howevei 
defective  its  form,  had  a  true  and  consistent  principle.  The  expression  of  Win- 
throp  was,  "  The  civil  state  must  be  raised  out  of  the  churches."  This  also 
could  not  consist  with  a  negative  or  formal  conception  of  freedom,  and  Winthrop 
always  condemns  such  a  conception. 
25 


386  THE  NATION. 

It  is  said,  in  the  one  form,  that  Judaea  was  a  theocracy, 
and  then  the  inference  is  drawn  that,  by  this  fact,  it  is 
isolated  from  other  nations,  and  for  them  has  no  immediate 
significance.  The  word  theocracy,  in  this  connection,  is 
traced  from  Josephus,  a  Jew  of  an  imperial  age,  and  if  it 
represents  the  isolation  of  one  nation  from  another  in  the 
divine  government  of  the  world,  or  the  exclusion  of  any 
nation  from  the  universal  law  manifested  in  that  ^overn- 

o 

ment,  then  it  is  the  assumption  against  which  the  prophets 
constantly  contended. 

And  the  principles  in  which  Judaea  is  formed,  are  rep- 
resented as  the  universal  and  immutable  laws  which  are 
the  condition  of  the  life  of  a  nation.  If  it  had  not  a  divine 
origin  and  unity,  if  there  had  not  been  in  it  the  pres- 
ence of  an  invisible  King,  it  would  then  have  been  the 
exception,  and  its  course  the  singular  circumstance,  the 
abnormal  condition  in  history. 

It  is  said,  however,  that  the  divine  vocation  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  the  foundation  of  the  nation  in  a  righteous  Will 
which  was  manifest  in  Judaea,  is  limited  to  the  past,  to  the 
prophetical  ages,  but  with .  the  coming  of  the  Christ,  in 
whom  those  ages  are  fulfilled,  it  ceases  to  be  real.  There 
is  no  more  a  divine  presence  and  guidance  of  the  people, 
nor  the  foundation  of  its  unity  in  a  righteous  Will,  nor 
the  condition  of  the  being  of  the  nation  in  righteousness. 
Then  in  the  later  manifestation  the  divine  power  is  further 
removed.  Judaea  was  a  nation  called  and  chosen  in  his- 
tory, but  in  the  fuller  years  there  are  none.  The  end  is 
changed  from  the  beginning,  that  history  is  to  be  read  as 
the  letters  in  the  Hebrew  books.  But  the  Christ  is  repre- 
sented in  his  coming  as  the  only  King,  and  as  nearer  to 
humanity  than  in  the  earlier  ages,  and  as  revealing  in  his 
own  life  the  foundation  of  its  eternal  relationships.  The 
Christ  is  called  the  only  King,  the  Deliverer,  in  obedience 
to  whom  the  freedom  of  the  individual  and  the  nation  con- 
sists. And  as  there  has  been  in  nations  the  recognition 


THE   BEGINNING   AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  387 

of  the  Christ  as  the  King,  there  has  been  the  formation 
of  a  national  life,  and  the  unity  in  which  alone  the  divis- 
ions of  races  are  overcome  ;  and  as  the  nations  have 
rejected  the  Christ  as  the  King,  no  more  a  power  in  his 
Kingdom,  they  have  passed  from  history. 

It  is  because  Judaea  was  a  real  theocracy  that  it  is  not 
detached  from  the  government  and  history  of  the  world, 
and  its  record  is  of  worth  for  every  nation,  and  the  pres- 
ence of  which  it  is  the  witness  is  not  more  distant  but 
nearer  than  of  old,  —  the  Christ  is  the  King  from  whose 
authority  no  nation  is  excluded.  But  it  is  allowed  that,  in 
a  certain  conception,  the  Christ  is  the  King,  and  then  the 
conception  is  assumed  to  be  one  to  which  the  nation  may 
give  no  further  heed.  It  is  held  as  an  abstraction,  and 
withdrawn  from  the  actual  lives  of  men  and  nations.  It  is 
referred  to  the  province  of  the  dogmatist  and  the  ecclesiast, 
and  is  presumed  no  longer  to  concern  the  man  of  affairs ; 
the  statesman  may  recognize  it  only  as  in  some  rhetorical 
phrase,  he  strengthens  his  appeal  in  conformance  to  pop- 
ular impressions  not  yet  worn  out ;  the  journalist  is  to  dis- 
miss it  as  belonging  to  the  dream  of  the  mystic,  but  having 
no  relation  to  events  as  the  days  go  by ;  the  economist, 
apprehending  the  nation  only  as  the  commonwealth,  may 
insist  upon  a  sustained  indifference  to  it,  as  alone  con- 
sistent in  politics,  until  there  comes  some  crisis,  when  the 
maxims  of  economy  are  unheeded,  and  the  craft  of  parties 
is  confounded,  and  the  systems  of  theorists  and  the  devices 
of  legists  are  burned  as  stubble  in  the  flames  that  try  all 
things. 

The  nation  is  constituted  not  in  a  formal  but  a  real 
theocracy,  and  there  is  nothing  more  to  be  considered  in 
certain  phases  of  modern  thought  than  the  negation  of  the 
real  theocratic  idea  in  connection  with  the  avowal  of  its 
abstract  postulate  and  abstract  conclusion.  It  eliminates 
the  whole  content  of  the  Gospels  in  their  constant  repre- 
sentation of  the  Christ  as  the  King,  while  deferring  to  its 
abstract  conception. 


388  THE  NATION. 

If  further  it  be  assumed  that  Judaea,  in  the  recognition 
and  presence  of  the  divine  King,  becomes  the  anomaly  in 
history,-  this  is  controverted  by  the  fact  that  it  is  a  nation.1 
This  is  its  historical  condition,  whatever  may  be  the  drift 
of  historical  abstractions.     The  laws  of  the  life  of  nations 
are  illustrated  in   it,  but   it  is   not   exempt  from  them 
There  is  no  presentation  of  the  formulas  of  political  sci 
ence,   in  the   construction   of  a  system,  but  there  is  the 
being  of  the  nation  in  history.     There  is  no  formal  organ 
ization  defined  in  necessary  correspondence  to  the  nation . 
but  it  exists  in  its  identity  under  the  lawgiver,  the  judges, 
the  kings ;  and  the  peril,  which  is  always  near,  is  that  the 
people  will  lose  the  consciousness  of  the  unity  and  con 
tinuity  of  the  nation  in  its  invisible  king,  and  apprehend  it 
only  as  a  formal  and  external  organization. 

In  the  opposite  form  to  this,  —  in  which  the  representa- 
tion of  Judaea  as  a  theocracy  has  been  made  the  premise  of 
its  detachment  in  history,  —  its  representation  as  a  nation 
is  made  the  premise  of  the  same  conclusion. 

It  is  admitted  that  Judaea  was  a  nation,  but  there  is  the 
conception  of  the  nation  as  only  in  identity  with  an  exclu- 
sive form  or  principle,  and  the  denial  of  its  universality. 
The  nation  is  regarded  as  formed  only  in  a  separative 

1  "  The  true  spiritual  life  of  the  world  commenced  in  the  chosen  people.  He 
who  denies  this  would  seem  to  deny  not  a  theory  of  inspiration,  but  a  great  and 
manifest  fact  of  history.  But  the  spiritual  life  commenced  under  an  earthly 
mould  of  national  life,  similar  in  all  respects,  political,  social,  and  literary,  to 
those  of  other  races.  The  Jewish  nation,  in  short,  was  a  nation  and  not  a  mira- 
cle. Had  it  been  a  miracle,  it  might  have  shown  forth  the  power  of  God,  like 
the  stars  in  Heaven,  but  it  would  have  been  nothing  to  the  rest  of  mankind,  nor 
could  its  spiritual  life  have  helped  to  awaken  theirs."  —  Goldwin  Smith,  The, 
Bible  on  Slavery,  etc.,  p.  5. 

Spinoza  represents  the  position  of  Judaea  as  isolated  in  history.  The  second 
inquiry  in  the  introduction  to  the  Tractatus  Theologico  Politicus  is,  "  Why  the 
Hebrews  were  called  and  chosen  of  God  V  "  to  which  the  answer  i?,  "  When  I 
saw  that  this  meant  nothing  more  than  that  God  gave  them  a  certain  spot  of  the 
earth,  where  they  might  dwell  securely  and  commodiously,  I  learned  that  the 
laws  revealed  to  Moses  by  God,  were  nothing  but  the  laws  of  the  special  Hebrew 
empire,  and  therefore  that  none  except  the  Hebrews  were  bound  to  receive 
them;  nay,  that  even  they  were  not  bound  by  them,  except  so  long  as  their 
empire  in  Palestine  lasted.'' 


THE  BEGINNING  AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  389 

principle.  It  is  the  local  and  transient,  and  is  a  subject 
of  concernment  to  a  certain  people,  and  therefore  of  nc 
further  concernment.  It  is  only  the  special  circumstance 
of  history,  and  is  comprehended  in  the  special  character- 
istics of  a  people. 

But  it  is,  as  containing  the  revelation  of  the  being  of 
the  nation — it  is  as  national,  that  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
are  of  worth  to  every  nation.  If  they  represented  the 
being  of  the  nation  with  indifference,  or  as  simply  a  formal 
organization,  then  they  would  have  no  immediate  worth 
for  this  or  for  any  nation.  It  is  because  they  reveal  the 
foundation  of  the  unity  and  continuity  of  the  first  nation 
in  history,  that  they  may  become  also  the  book  of  the  last. 

Mr.  Lowell  speaks  of  the  mind  of  Cromwell  in  certain 
higher  moments,  as  "working  free  from  Judaic  trammels." 
But  in  the  age  to  which  Cromwell  was  called,  in  the  battle 
with  unrighteousness  in  the  land  and  with  the  allied 
imperialism  and  ecclesiasticism  of  which  Spain  was  the 
front,  it  was  not  trammels  which  were  forged  for  him  in 
the  Old  Testament  which  he  knew  so  well,  and  had  studied 
as  none  of  England's  kings  before  or  since.  Would 
a  knowledge  of  what  is  described  as  Aryan  civilization 
have  been  a  substitute  for  the  record  of  that  national  life, 
so  deep  and  so  intense  and  linked  to  the  Throne  of  God, 
and  finding  its  unity  in  Him?  There  have  been  those 
whose  thought  was  without  "  these  trammels  "  —  Julian, 
with  a  fair  and  catholic  culture,  whose  aim  was  an  intel- 
lectual imperialism,  into  which  all  nations  were  to  be 
merged,  as  their  images  and  divinities  were  to  be  gathered 
in  one  hall ;  —  Spinoza,  whose  ideal  of  the  state  was,  that 
"it  should  leave  the  philosophers  free  to  think;"  — 
Goethe,  as  the  courtier  at  a  little  principality,  who  com- 
plained that  "  in  the  state,  no  one  was  willing  to  live  and 
enjoy,  every  one  wanted  to  be  ruling;  "  —  would  Crom- 
well, working  still  in  the  type  of  his  own  individuality,  have 
found  in  the  riddance  of  ".Judaic  trammels,"  with  these, 


390  THE  NATION. 

elements  of  freedom  ?  If  we  study  the  mind  of  Cromwell, 
every  element  of  strength  was  wrought  in  the  faith  in 
which  these  words  hecome  an  inspiration.  There  was 
another  —  his  secretary  —  in  the  same  work,  who  knew 
these  Hebrew  Scriptures  not  as  a  boy  but  as  a  man  knows, 
but  in  that  type  of  strength  and  freedom  which  is  only  of 
more  worth  if  it  have  traces  also  of  an  Hellenic  spirit, 
"  the  Samson  Agonistes,"  still  so  perfect  an  expression  of 
undying  faith  in  the  triumph  of  the  nation  over  all  its  ene- 
mies, —  is  there  the  restraint  of  old  trammels,  —  the  defect 
of  Milton's  freedom  ?  They  may  not  always  have  sepa- 
rated that  which  in  the  earthly  vesture  of  the  nation  is 
local  and  transient,  from  its  real  being,  but  there  have 
been  few  holding  a  conception  so  clear.  It  is  not  as  men 
enter  into  the  consciousness  of  the  spirit  of  the  nation  that 
their  march  is  trammelled  and  their  fetters  are  forged.  It 
is  with  the  free  that  we  are  free.  There  has  been  no  na- 
tion but  as  the  mind  enters  more  deeply  into  its  spirit  it 
is  imbued  with  larger  freedom.  It  was  not  in  the  Judaic, 
nor  the  Roman,  nor  the  Hellenic  life,  that  there  was  the 
forging  of  bonds  for  men.  Thus  there  is  a  value  for  a  peo- 
ple, in  the  study  of  the  literature  and  art  of  Greece  and 
Rome,  beyond  the  study  of  the  style  and  thought  of  »their 
several  poets  and  historians.  It  is  the  contact  with  the  life 
of  the  nation  which  transcends  the  life  of  the  individual, 
and  is  deeper  than  any  separate  work  in  literature  and  art. 
This  representation  of  Judaic  or  Roman  or  Hellenic  tram- 
mels has  its  source  in  the  assumption  of  a  negative  notion 
of  freedom.1 

1  The  Bible  has  been  removed  from  the  course  of  study  in  universities,  and  then 
from  academies,  and  has  no  place,  corresponding  simply  as  a  history  and  litera- 
ture, to  the  history  and  literature  of  Greece  and  Rome.  A  well-known  missionary 
in  Syria,  a  recent  graduate  of  Yale  College,  said  to  me,  that  scarcely  any  scholars 
left  their  schools  in  Syria,  but  with  a  more  thorough  knowledge  of  the  Bible  than 
the  larger  number  of  the  recent  graduates  of  Yale  College.  This  omission  of  its 
studv  is  partly  the  result  of  the  principle  which  has  referred  it  exclusively  to  the 
sphere  of  the  dogmatist  and  the  ecclesiast.  The  one  regards  it  primarily  as  a 
system  of  dogmas  and  a  collection  of  isolated  proof-texts  detached  to  sustain 


THE  BEGINNING  AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  391 

There  is  the  record  in  these  Scriptures  of  the  realization 
of  history  of  the  family  and  the  nation.  There  is  the  reve- 
lation not  of  a  system,  but  of  the  divine  order  in  the  world. 

The  nation  has  its  own  place  and  vocation  in  history. 
It  is  as  with  the  individual ;  the  life  of  none  is  the  same  in 
its  outward  form  and  condition,  and  yet  the  life  of  each  has 
the  same  origin,  and  is  subject  to  the  same  law  of  moral 
action.  There  is  thus  a  work  for  one  nation  which  is  hot 
for  another,  and  there  is  a  field  of  outward  circumstance 
which  is  the  occasion  for  specific  laws  and  regulations; 
there  is  a  conduct  of  affairs  which  concerns  it  alone,  and 

them ;  and  thus  it  becomes  restricted  to  the  schools  in  which  these  systems  are 
taught  and  to  their  exposition  on  Sundays;  while  the  other  regards  it  primarily 
as  the  record  of  an  ecclesiastical  institution,  and  open  only  to  the  knowledge  and 
understanding  of  a  corporation  of  priests,  and  requiring  the  guidance  of  ecclesi- 
asts  for  its  explanation,  and  in  connection  with  a  ritualism,  to  be  kept  in  its  special 
sanctity.  It  is  thus  removed  from  its  place  in  the  education  of  the  people,  and 
left  to  the  doctor  and  the  priest.  It  has  no  place  corresponding  to  that  given 
it  by  the  great  masters  of  thought,  in  the  greater  periods  of  universities,  from 
William  of  Occam  to  Hegel.  It  might  be  better  to  study  it  with  the  commen- 
tary of  Spinoza  and  Hobbes,  than  to  avoid  it  altogether.  The  recent  tendency 
is  not  simply  to  give  their  fair  place  to  the  physical  sciences  in  their  great  de- 
velopment, but  to  exclude  the  study  also  of  the  literature  of  Greece  and  Rome; 
the  positivism  of  science  in  the  revelation  of  the  physical  world,  is  preferred 
to  the  positivism  of  history  in  the  revelation  of  the  moral  world,  the  dynamic  is 
before  the  divine.  For  one  who  makes  the  phenomenal  process  of  nature  and 
the  mind  of  man  as  involved  in  that  process,  the  only  object  of  study  and  of 
thought,  these  Jewish  Scriptures  can  have  little  value.  And  since  their  dates 
are  not  always  consistent,  and  their  chronology  indicates  that  it  has  been  hope- 
lessly tampered  with,  what  is  their  value  for  those  whose  census  is  taken  in  the 
year  1870  ?  There  is  also  no  effort  to  convey  information  as  to  the  authorship  of 
the  separate  documents,  and  the  situation  of  the  writers,  and  the  various  ques- 
tions of  the  utmost  consequence  to  the  critical  art  of  the  grammarian.  And  to  those 
who  maintain  in  a  superficial  empiricism  the  only  principle  in  which  the  state  is 
formed,  they  must  be  but  a  very  disjointed  collection  of  documents,  containing 
the  record  of  the  migration  and  fortunes  of  a  very  inferior  race,  who  were  sep- 
arated from  other  races  by  a  narrow  and  exclusive  prejudice,  and  who  have 
contributed  nothing  to  the  questions  which  are  alone  prominent  —  the  so-called 
freedom  of  trade  and  the  progress  of  political  enlightenment  in  the  combination 
of  wealth  and  labor,  and  who  in  superstitious  and  theological  cycles,  holding 
through  poverty  and  captivity  their  faith  in  a  calling  in  history  from  an  invisible 
King,  and  their  ultimate  triumph,  refused  through  every  sacrifice  wholly  to  merge 
themselves  into  the  empires  around  them,  and  thereby  failed  to  obtain  the  vast 
wealth  which  the  traditions  of  these  empires  indicate,  and  of  which  the  ruins  of 
their  buildings  and  walls  bear  the  t»ace. 


892  THE  NATION. 

there  is  a  development  in  the  ages  in  which  it  is  formed ; 
in  each  age  it  has  to  contend  with  evils  which  are  peculiar 
to  it,  and  as  it  rises  out  of  a  condition  in  which  slavery  and 
violence  and  the  worship  of  animal  forms  everywhere 
prevail,  it  is  through  its  own  conscious  struggle  and 
endeavor. 

There  is  in  the  divine  order  the  calling  and  founding 
of  the  family.  It  is  the  unfolding  of  the  relations  of  father 
and  brother  and  son.  There  is  a  careful  tracing  of  their 
descent  in  the  simple  succession  of  names.  There  are  the 
lives  of  those  who  lived  as  their  fathers,  and  were 
married,  and  had  sons  and  daughters,  and  dying  were 
gathered  to  their  fathers.  Even  the  sins  which  mainly 
are  described  in  the  book  of  the  Genesis,  are  those  in 
which  there  is  a  violation  of  the  moral  unity  and  order  of 
the  family. 

There  is  then  the  record  of  the  calling  and  founding  of 
, /the  nation.  It  has  its  foundation  in  God,  it  subsists  in  the 
I  am  —  the  everlasting  Will.  The  revelation  of  God,  in 
the  calling  of  the  people,  is  as  the  God  of  their  fathers. 
The  words  which  the  leader,  who  was  to  go  forth  in  the 
beginning  of  their  history,  was  to  say  to  the  people,  were 
those  in  which  was  the  revelation  of  the  Name  in  which 
the  nation  stood,  —  "Behold,  when  I  come  unto  the  child- 
ren of  Israel,  and  shall  say  unto  them  The  God  of  your 
fathers  hath  sent  me  unto  you,  and  they  shall  say  to 
me  What  is  his  name  ?  what  shall  I  say  unto  them  ?  And 
God  said  unto  Moses,  I  AM  THAT  I  AM,  and  he  said  Thus 
shalt  thou  say  unto  the  children  of  Israel,  I  AM  hath  sent 
me  unto  you."  1  The  calling  of  the  people  was  from  God  , 
the  nation  is  formed  in  no  transient  and  no  external  cir- 
cumstance, but  in  the  Eternal,  the  I  AM.  It  subsists  in  no 
compact  of  men,  but  in  the  everlasting  Will. 

It  was  in  this  name  they  were  to  confront  the  tyr- 
anny which  was  over  them,  and  in  it  they  were  to  stand 

1  Exodus  iii.  13,  14. 


THE  BEGINNING   AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  393 

against  all  the  tyrannies  of  the  world.  God  was  revealed 
as  the  Deliverer.  It  was  the  redemption  of  the  people ; 
their  freedom  was  a  divine  gift.  The  words  of  triumph 
were,  "  I  will  rid  you  out  of  their  bondage,  and  I  will 
redeem  you  with  a  stretched  out  arm,  and  with  great  judg- 
ments." The  words  which  are  repeated  beyond  all  other 
memorials  are,  "  Thou  shalt  remember  that  thou  wast  a 
bondman  in  Egypt,  and  the  Lord  thy  God  redeemed  thee 
thence."  The  rest  of  the  nation  was  in  peace  and  free- 
dom, and  the  goal  toward  which  time  was  to  bear  them, 
was  the  sabbatical  year,  the  year  of  jubilee,  in  which  they 
were  to  "proclaim  liberty  throughout  the  land,  and  to  all 
the  inhabitants  thereof." l 

The  succeeding  event  which  is  most  impressive  in  their 
history,  and  that  came  in  the  most  solemn  circumstance 
of  nature,  was  the  witness  to  those  elements,  which  can 
never  be  separated  in  the  being  of  the  people  in  a  moral 
order.  There  was  at  Sinai,  in  the  giving  of  the  law  and 
the  gathering  of  the  people,  says  Ewald,  a  twofold  signifi- 
cance :  there  was  the  witness  to  the  sacredness  of  the  law 
and  the  sacredness  of  the  people,  —  it  was  an  holy  law  and 
"  an  holy  nation." 

The  commandments  presume  the  existence  of  the  nation, 
as  they  proceed  to  define  its  institutes  in  a  moral  order,  as 
the  institutes  of  labor  and  rest,  of  property,  of  marriage. 
But  the  people  is  to  remember  in  its  law  the  living  pres- 
ence, the  divine  Deliverer.  The  preamble  to  the  law, 
which  may  never  rightly  be  separated  from  it,  is  the  declar- 
ation of  their  freedom  as  a  divine  gift ;  their  freedom  is  in 
identity  with  law  and  can  never  become  the  license  in 
which  man  is  separated  from  God. 

The  land  which  the  people  were  to  possess  was  given  to 
them  from  God,  and  was  appointed  for  them.  They 
were  to  hold  it  as  an  inheritance.  Yet  they  were  to  learn 
that  its  possession  alone  was  not  the  condition  of  national 

i  Levificus  xxv.  10. 


394  THE  NATION. 

life,  that  their  national  being  was  not  the  resultant  of 
physical  circumstance.  The  unity  of  the  nation  was  in  no 
visible  bond,  and  was  determined  by  no  confine  of  land 
and  sea.  Their  unity  and  continuity  was  in  God,  in  the 
revelation  which  He  made  to  them,  "  I  am  the  God  of  thy 
fathers." 

There  is  in  no  literature  so  deep  an  expression  of  the 
existence  of  the  nation  as  an  heritage  to  be  transmitted 
from  the  fathers  to  the  children,  but  the  fulfillment  of  the 
divine  righteousness  is  always  made  the  condition  of  the 
permanence  of  the  people  in  the  land. 

The  education  of  the  people  through  the  centuries  of 
their  moral  and  political  advancement,  was  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  relation  in  which  they  stood  to  the  visible  and 
the  invisible  world.  They  were  learning  in  their  national 
wars  and  trials,  and  through  all  changes  and  crises,  to  look 
to  a  Being  who  was  not  made  in  the  likeness  of  things  in 
the  heaven  above  or  in  the  earth  beneath,  and  to  know 
Him  as  their  Law-giver  and  Deliverer  and  Judge. 

The  unity  of  the  nation  was  not  defined  in  any  special 
or  temporal  limitation.  It  was  not  limited  to  its  existent 
occupants ;  it  was  not  shut  up  to  "  this  bank  and  shoal  of 
time."  The  nation  was  not,  as  in  the  false  civilizations 
around  it,  defined  in  a  merely  physical  condition.  It  was 
not  as  those  whose  course  was  only  that  of  a  civil  cor- 
poration, associated  by  some  external  fear,  or  to  obtain  an 
individual  and  common  external  security,  or  to  promote 
external  interests  in  pleasure  or  possession.  That  was 
the  character  of  the  material  civilizations  around  them, 
and  if  the  nation  was  to  lose  itself  in  that,  it  was  the 
destruction  of  its  life.  It  could  not  continue  merely  as 
the  civil  commonwealth ;  if  it  had  no  aim  beyond  that,  its 
vocation  as  a  nation  was  gone  and  it  was  undone.  In 
all  its  history  it  was  in  contrast  to  the  surrounding  civili- 
zations. The  condition,  against  the  evil  of  which  it  was 
the  witness,  began  with  the  purpose  "  Go  to,  let  us  build 


THE  BEGINNING  AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  395 

a  city,"  and  the  unity  it  opposed  was  that  determined  in 
the  measure  of  the  city  walls,  as  if  the  origin  of  society 
was  in  fear  and  distrust,  and  the  end  was  an  external 
security  through  the  division  of  men.  The  nation  was 
formed  in  the  relationships  of  life,  and  in  the  recognition 
of  a  relation  to  an  invisible  one ;  it  did  not  exist  simply 
as  an  accumulation  of  men  and  in  the  construction  of 
an  external  order.  The  circumstance  of  its  beginning 
was  not  with  the  "building  of  a  city,"  but  on  the  'wide 
and  open  plains,  and  in  the  journeying  through  the  sea 
and  the  wilderness.  It  was  only  after  struggle,  and 
through  trials  and  vicissitudes,  in  which  there  was  the 
recognition  of  laws,  and  the  institutions  of  order,  and  the 
common  organization  of  the  people,  with  noble  memories, 
and  with  far  hopes  for  their  children,  that  they  came  to 
build  a  city.  Then  the  memorials  of  the  people  were 
gathered  in  it.  Yet  their  unity  was  not  in  it,  nor  de- 
pendent upon  it.  The  nation  lived  although  its  walls 
were  leveled  to  the  ground,  and  the  stones  of  its  temple 
were  scattered  and  broken. 

The  life  of  the  nation  was  through  a  course  of  moral 
conflict  and  endeavor.  It  was  not  as  in  the  civilization  of 
the  Philistine  —  an  animal  existence,  with  faith  only  in 
visible  things  and  sunk  in  the  worship  of  animal  forms.  It 
was  through  unceasing  wrestling  with  evil  that  its  advance 
lay.  It  was  not  formed  in  moral  indifference.  The  awful 
gates  of  the  mountains  were  open  before  it,  and  through 
them  its  journey  led.  It  was  tried  in  great  crises.  "  The 
Lord  hath  taken  you  and  brought  you  forth  out  of  the  iron 
furnace." 

The  national  progress  is  one  in  which  laws  and  institu- 
tions are  acquired;  there  is  the  organization  of  justicej 
and  the  form  for  its  administration.  Justice  is  to  be  exe- 
cuted. "  Judges  and  officers  shalt  thou  make  in  all  thy 
gates,  which  the  Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee,  throughout 
thy  tribes :  and  they  shall  judge  the  people  with  just 


396  THE   NATION. 

judgment.  Thou  shalt  not  wrest  judgment ;  thou  shalt 
not  respect  persons,  neither  take  a  gift :  for  a  gift  doth 
blind  the  eyes  of  the  wise,  and  pervert  the  words  of  the 
righteous." l  The  maintenance  of  justice  is  necessary  to 
their  continuance  in  the  land. 

The  universality  of  law  is  affirmed  —  the  requisition  of 
all  men  to  a  judgment  by  the  law,  and  the  equality  of  all 
men  before  the  law.  It  is  repeated  from  page  to  page, 
and  there  is  warning  against  its  denial,  and  the  peril 
of  its  forgetfulness.  "One  law  shall  be  to  him  that  is 
home-born,  and  to  the  stranger  that  sojourneth  among 
you."  2  "  One  ordinance  shall  be  for  you  of  the  congre- 
gation, and  also  for  the  stranger  that  sojourneth  with  you, 
— an  ordinance  forever  in  your  generations  ;  as  ye  are, 
so  shall  the  stranger  be  before  the  Lord."3  "Judge 
righteously  between  every  man  and  his  brother  and  the 
stranger  that  is  with  him.  Ye  shall  not  respect  persons 
in  judgment ;  ye  shall  hear  the  small  as  well  as  the 
great ;  ye  shall  not  be  afraid  of  the  face  of  man,  for  the 
judgment  is  God's."  4  The  words  of  the  greatest  of  its 
kings,  in  his  farewell  to  the  people,  are,  "  The  rock  of 
Israel  spake  to  me,  —  he  that  ruleth  over  men  must  be 
just,  ruling  in  the  fear  of  God." 5  There  is  a  singular 
beauty,  among  sentences  of  lofty  severity,  in  the  imagery 
in  which  the  equity  of  the  Judge  is  portrayed ;  his  judg- 
ment must  be  clear  as  the  light,  "  as  a  morning  without 
clouds,"  and  yet,  "  as  the  tender  grass,  springing  out  of 
the  earth,  by  clear  shining  after  rain." 

The  law  is  represented  not  as  abstract,  but  as  the  man- 
ifestation of  a  righteous  will,  and  therefore  it  is  a  power 
which  will  not  conform  to  the  arbitrary  schemes,  nor  sub- 
serve the  arbitrary  aims,  of  men.  It  is  the  affirmation  of 
ft  righteous  will  against  the  self-willed  powers  which  would 
rend  society.  It  can  be  severed  by  no  individual  caprice 

1  Deuteronomy  xvi.  18, 19.         2  Exodus  xii.  49.          3  Numbers  xv.  15 
4  Deuteronomy  i.  16, 17.  5  Samuel  xxiii.  3.  4. 


THE  BEGINNING  AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  397 

or  individual  interest.  The  ruler  is  not  above  the  Jaw, 
but  is  the  minister  of  the  law  to  maintain  it  unswervingly, 
and  is  "to  keep  the  words  of  this  law,  and  these  statutes 
to  do  them,  that  his  heart  be  not  lifted  up  above  his 
brethren,  and  that  he  turn  not  aside  from  the  command- 
ment to  the  right  hand  or  to  the  left."  * 

The  people  in  its  organization  was  separated  into  com- 
munities or  tribes ;  but  there  was  one  tribe  dispersed 
through  the  whole  as  the  witness  of  its  unity.  Its  exist- 
ence was  the  witness  that  the  strength  of  each  stood  in  its 
relation  to  the  whole,  and  the  strength  of  the  whole  in  its 
relation  to  an  eternal  King.  It  was  a  relationship.  It 
was  only  in  the  denial  that  the  unity  of  the  nation  was 
in  the  living  and  eternal  Will,  that  they  could  be  separated 
from  God,  and  therefore  from  each  other.  The  unity  of 
the  nation  was  not  formal,  that  it  should  find  in  society  an 
external  limitation  in  any  organization.  It  was  formed  as  an 
organic  whole.  Aaron  was  chosen  as  the  helper  of  Moses. 

There  is  the  guidance,  the  care  and  love  which  is 
revealed  to  nations  often  in  the  darkest  hours,  and  in 
apparent  defeat,  through  the  providential  history  of  the 
people.  There  were  the  memorials  of  the  renewal  of  the 
nation's  faith  when  it  was  assailed  by  foes  without  and 
within.  "  I  did  bear  you  on  eagle's  wings ; "  and  again, 
"in  the  wilderness  thou  hast  seen  how  the  Lord  thy  God 
did  bear  thee,  as  a  man  doth  bear  his  son,  in  all  the  way 
that  ye  went,  until  ye  came  unto  this  place." 

The  nation  is  inclusive  of  the  whole  people  in  its  divine 
foundation  and  its  divine  end.  There  is  no  difference  of  ) 
wealth,  or  race,  or  physical  condition,  that  can  be  made 
the  ground  of  exclusion  from  it.  There  is  none  in  it  that 
can  be  isolated  from  the  privileges  and  the  duties  of  the 
covenant  in  which  it  is  formed.  "  Ye  stand  this  day,  all 
of  you,  before  the  Lord  your  God ;  your  captains  of  your 
tribes,  your  elders,  and  your  officers,  with  all  the  men  of 

i  Deuteroaomy  xvii.  19,  20. 


398  THE  NATION. 

Israel ;  your  little  ones,  your  wives,  and  the  stranger  that 
is  in  thy  camp  ;  from  the  hewer  of  thy  wood  unto  the 
drawer  of  thy  water ;  that  thou  shouldest  enter  into  cov- 
enant with  the  Lord  thy  God,  and  into  his  oath  which  the 
Lord  thy  God  maketh  to  thee  this  day,  for  a  people  to 
himself,  and  that  he  may  be  unto  thee  a  God,  as  he  hath 
said  unto  thee,  and  as  he  hath  sworn  unto  thy  Fathers,  — 
to  Abraham,  to  Isaac,  and  to  Jacob." l 

The  nation  was  to  maintain  a  divine  calling,  which  was 
manifest  through  all  its  history.  It  had  a  work  which  was 
its  own  and  which  it  could  not  transfer  nor  abandon.  If 
it  betrayed  the  purpose  to  which  it  was  called,  it  was  no 
longer  to  have  place  in  the  power  of  history,  but  its  name 
was  to  become  a  name  of  scorn,  a  proverb  and  a  by-word 
among  men,  and  it  was  to  meet  with  shame  and  contempt. 
It  was  not  to  be  diverted  from  a  moral  purpose  by  a 
lower  object,  nor  to  apprehend  its  end  in  the  mere  accu- 
mulation of  material  wealth,  nor  in  the  satisfaction  of  a 
physical  existence.  There  was  the  most  solemn  warning 
against  the  gathering  of  wealth  and  possession  for  its  own 
sake,  and  against  the  forgetfulness  that  it  was  the  gift  of 
God  and  involved  duties  and  obligations.1  The  moral  ob- 
ligation which  was  manifest  in  the  calling  of  the  nation, 
was  to  be  maintained  in  its  immeasurable  supremacy,  as 
beyond  the  acquisition  of  wealth,  and  to  be  guarded  that 
it  should  not  be  lost  in  some  selfish  end.  "  The  graven 
images  of  their  gods  shall  ye  burn  with  fire  ;  ye  shall  not 
desire  the  silver  or  the  gold  that  is  on  them."  2 

The  nation  was  formed  in  the  conditions  of  a  moral  life, 
and  there  were  powers  to  be  employed  and  energies  to  be 
unfolded.  Its  freedom  was  wrought  through  a  divine 
deliverance,  but  as  in  the  nature  of  freedom,  it  was  not 
in  the  mere  apathy  and  passivity  of  the  spirit,  it  was  not 

1  Deuteronomy  xxix.  10, 13. 

Milton  says  of  Deuteronomy  xxviii. :  "  A  chapter  which  should  be  read  again 
»nd  again  by  those  who  have  the  direction  of  political  affairs."—  Treatise  on 
Christian  Doctrine,  etc.,  ch.  xvii. 

8  Deuteronomy  viii.  11, 18. 


THE  BEGINNING  AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  899 

the  invitation  to  repose.  It  came  with  the  opening  of  the 
waves  of  the  sea  and  the  long  march,  and  as  men  were 
bidden  to  "flee  by  night  and  by  day."  Their  Passover 
was  to  be  eaten  by  men  with  their  loins  girded  and  their 
staff  in  their  hands,  —  "ye  shall  eat  it  in  haste." 

Since  their  course  was  a  moral  discipline,  every  diversion 
from  it  was  to  bring  divine  judgments  upon  them,  as  they 
had  come  upon  the  peoples  around  them,  and  these  judg- 
ments were  not  in  their  separation  from  other  peoples  but 
in  the  manifestation  of  a  universal  law.  In  the  forgetful- 
ness  of  their  vocation  the  doom  which  had  come  upon  these 
corrupt  communities  was  to  come  upon  them.  "  And  it 
shall  be  if  thou  do  at  all  forget  the  Lord  thy  God,  and  walk 
after  other  gods,  and  worship  them  and  serve  them,  I  tes- 
tify against  you  this  day  that  ye  shall  surely  perish.  As 
the  nations  which  the  Lord  destroyeth  before  your  face,  so 
shall  ye  perish,  because  ye  would  not  be  obedient  unto  the 
voice  of  the  Lord  your  God." 

The  progress  of  the  nation  through  its  own  vocation  is 
in  the  realization  of  a  moral  being  and  order.  As  it  has 
its  own  work  in  its  own  place  and  age,  there  are  institu- 
tions and  regulations  especially  adapted  to  it  which  are 
transient  and  local.  It  is  formed  in  the  life  of  the  spirit, 
and  is  not  to  be  merely  the  exposition  of  a  system  of  un- 
changing laws  and  regulations.  It  is  thus  that  there  are 
laws  and  regulations  which  are  moulded  in  the  measure  of 
the  development  of  the  nation,  and  thus  it  is  said  that 
Moses  gave  them  certain  forms  and  regulations  for  the 
"  hardness  of  their  hearts ;  "  —  not  for  their  wickedness, 
which  only  judgment  can  follow,  but  for  their  rude  and 
obdurate  condition.  And  everywhere  there  was  violence 
and  slavery  and  rapine  and  war,  and  private  revenge,  and 
there  were  evils  which  were  the  special  characteristic  of 
the  age.  These  were  not  the  institutions  of  the  nation, 
but  they  prevailed  everywhere  on  the  earth,  they  were  the 
wickedness  in  which  the  world  lieth.  Thus  slavery  was 


400  THE  NATION. 

not  the  creation  of  the  law  of  the  nation,  but  already  ex- 
isted, and  the  laws  and  institutions  of  the  nation  tended  to 
ameliorate  its  condition,  and  ultimately  to  abolish  it.  Thus 
also  war  and  private  revenge  were  not  the  institutions  of 
the  nation,  but  the  nation  in  its  own  being  was  in  conflict 
with  them,  and  its  normal  process  tended  to  their  removal. 
The  nation  was  called  out  of  a  condition  of  slavery  into 
freedom.  It  might  not,  since  it  was  formed  in  the  condi- 
tions of  history,  remove  these  evils  in  one  moment,  but 
its  whole  course,  its  institutions  and  its  order,  tend  to  their 
mitigation  and  ultimate  extirpation.  Thus  against  wild 
and  unchecked  private  revenge,  it  opens  cities  of  asylum, 
and  to  a  system  of  slavery  it  places  as  a  terminus  the  sab- 
batical year,  which  is  hailed  as  the  year  of  jubilee,  and 
while  they  are  called  to  battle,  and  confess  One  who  is 
with  them  in  the  battle,  that  they  shall  not  turn  nor  be 
affrighted  at  their  enemies,  yet  they  look  forward  to  the 
time  when  there  shall  be  "  peace  in  all  their  borders." 

There  is  in  the  progress  of  the  nation  the  ampler  rec- 
ognition of  its  calling.  It  was  to  bear  witness  to  a  divine 
King  and  Deliverer  and  Judge,  against  those  who  would 
subject  the  spirit  of  man  to  the  things  which  are  seen.  It 
was  to  bear  witness  to  a  righteous  Will,  which  would  estab- 
lish righteousness  on  the  earth,  against  those  who  assumed 
only  a  momentary  and  transient  will,  or  the  self-will  of 
men.  It  was  to  bear  witness  to  Him  and  his  righteousness 
against  those  who  corrupted  society,  those  who  took  bribes, 
those  who  removed  landmarks.  The  nation  was  the  wit- 
ness that  these  could  not  have  their  own  way  on  earth, 
that  there  was  a  righteous  Will  which  would  regard  them. 
And  if  the  people  were  in  complicity  with  these,  the  judg- 
ments they  had  uttered  against  others  were  to  fall  upon 
themselves.  There  was  then  for  them  a  plague  of  fire  and 
a  plague  of  blood ;  that  two-handed  engine  at  the  door, 
which  smites  once  and  smites  no  more. 

The  nation  is  formed  as  a  moral  person.     The  elements 


THE  BEGINNING  AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  401 

of  the  deepest  personal  being  are  ascribed  to  it,  and  there 
is  no  personal  quality  but  is  demanded  of  it.  The  condi- 
tion of  the  moral  judgment  pronounced  against  it  is  in  its 
being  as  a  moral  person.  It  exists  in  the  working  out  of 
a  divine  vocation  and  a  divine  election  in  history.  Its  con- 
science is  not  the  reflection  of  a  law  of  expediency,  a  mere 
empiric  graduated  by  expectations  of  profit  and  loss,  but 
the  voice  of  very  God  speaking  to  the  nation  in  and 
through  its  history.  Its  work  in  righteousness  was  not  in 
the  conformance  to  an  abstract  law,  but  in  the  fulfillment 
of  a  living,  a  righteous  and  eternal  Will. 

The  nation  is  represented  as  a  moral  person.  It  is  de- 
clared to  be  a  holy  nation.  It  is  called  of  God ;  it  is  called 
to  be  holy  as  He  is  holy.  In  view  of  the  evils  in  the  land, 
to  call  it  a  holy  nation  may  seem  most  unreal.  The  im- 
becility of  the  ruler  of  a  people,  the  fraud  and  betrayal 
introduced  into  the  election  of  a  ruler  by  a  people,  the  sub- 
jection of  the  individual  conscience  to  the  ends  of  parties  and 
sects,  the  prevalence  of  corruption  and  bribery  and  robbery 
among  rulers  and  legislatures,  may  seem  often  to  bring  a 
doubt  of  the  reality  of  a  divine  government  on  the  earth, 
and  to  contradict  the  assertion  that  the  nation  is  a  moral 
being,  and  is  formed  in  a  divine  relation.  There  is  no 
concealment  of  the  evils  spreading  through  the  land  by 
those  in  whom  this  assertion  is  clearest.  It  is  said  that 
"  there  is  no  truth  and  mercy  or  knowledge  of  God  in  the 
land ;  by  swearing  and  lying  and  killing  and  stealing  and 
committing  adultery,  they  break  out ;  it  is  like  people  like 
priest,  and  the  prophets  are  with  them ;  the  king  is  glad 
with  their  wickedness,  the  king  is  a  drunkard."1  The 
prophet  who  had  declared  this  condition,  yet  could  declare 
that  the  nation  existed  in  a  relation  to  a  divine  King,  and 
it  was  this  which  made  the  revolt  and  the  corruption  of  the 
land  so  fearful.  In  its  sin  there  was  the  violation  of  the 
law  of  its  life,  the  contradiction  of  its  being.  It  had  been 

i  HoseaMr.  1,2;  viii.  3. 


402  THE  NATION. 

called  a  holy  nation.  It  was  bound  by  holy  bonds  in  a  di- 
vine relationship.  It  was  brought  into  a  holy  estate.  In 
the  relationship  in  which  it  exists,  there  is  the  revelation 
of  its  true  being  and  the  witness  to  its  unity.  The  rep- 
resentation which  is  the  sign  of  its  relation  to  its  divine 
Lord,  illustrates  the  nature  and  the  effect  of  the  sins  of  the 
nation,  the  root  of  its  crimes  and  the  result.  They  are 
denounced  as  the  adulteries  and  the  whoredoms  of  the 
people.  There  is  the  violation  of  the  bond  in  which  its 
relation  is  defined.  It  was  the  faith  that  the  nation  was 
a  holy  body,  and  that  it  was  constituted  in  a  holy  rela- 
tionship, that  was  the.  strength  and  stay  of  the  prophets  in 
the  darkest  hours.  In  its  analogy  with  all  human  relation- 
ships, the  prophet  who  gave  expression  to  the  divine  rela- 
tion of  the  nation,  was  one  who  was  to  learn  in  his  own 
life  the  truth  which  was  his  rest  in  the  evils  of  the  age  ; 
when  his  own  house  was  made  desolate,  he  could  not  for- 
get that  it  was  a  holy  bond  which  bound  him  to  her  whose 
crime  was  the  contradiction  of  the  relation  which  still  in 
its  nature  was  sacred,  and  the  memory  of  the  past  and  the 
existent  relation  to  his  children,  remained  as  the  evidence 
to  him  of  this  ;  in  this  there  was  the  reconciliation  of 
the  words  which  he  could  utter  in  the  deepening  wicked- 
ness of  the  land.  The  strength  of  the  nation  was  always 
in  the  faith  that  it  was  a  holy  body,  that  it  was  formed  in 
a  holy  relation,  that  in  its  very  being  it  was  in  conflict 
with  the  corruption  and  crime  and  violence  that  filled  the 
earth.1  The  peril  was  always  in  its  forgetting  or  denying 

1  See  Maurice,  Prophets  and  Kings,  pp.  196-230. 

"  These  bonds  might  be  regarded  as  artificial  and  imaginary;  they  would  be 
regarded  so  the  moment  the  nation  had  become  incapable  of  counting  anything 
as  real  that  was  not  visible;  the  moment  it  had  passed  into  an  utterly  idola- 
trous condition  of  mind.  But  their  reality  would  be  proved  by  the  gradual  dis- 
solution of  all  other  bonds;  by  the  growing  tendency  in  the  members  of  the 
nation  to  deny  that  they  stood  in  any  relation  to  eacii  other;  by  the  practice  of 
the  majority  assuming  that  each  man  lived  for  himself;  by  the  strength  and 
popularity  of  doctrines  which  justified  that  practice;  by  facts  which  showed 
that  those  who  treated  the  divine  covenant  as  a  fiction  became  themselves  the 
•port  of  every  fiction."  — Maurice,  Prophets  and  Kings,  p.  205. 


THE  BEGINNING  AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  403 

this,  or  seeking  its  end  in  some  merely  material  advance- 
ment, in  which  it  could  no  longer  contend  with  the  evil  in 
the  world.  It  was  the  fact  that  it  was  a  holy  nation,  that 
was  the  source  at  once  of  the  hopes  and  the  warnings  of 
the  prophets.  And  in  evil  days,  and  the  most  disastrous 
periods,  and  in  the  most  utter  corruption,  when  bribes  were 
taken  by  those  in  power,  and  unjust  judgments  were  ren- 
dered, and  fraud  and  oppression  and  violence  filled  the 
land,  in  the  character  of  the  judgments  pronounced  upon 
the  nation,  its  nature  is  revealed.  In  the  awful  light  of 
the  moral  judgments  which  fill  the  burden  of  the  proph- 
ets, there  is  alike  the  manifestation  of  its  real  being,  and  of 
its  eternal  relationship,  and  its  divine  estate,  and  its  ances- 
tral honors,  and  the  glory  it  had  known,  as  well  as  its 
weakness  and  pollution  and  shame. 

The  course  of  the  nation  in  history  was  not  itself  with- 
out illustration  of  the  foes  which  threaten  its  destruc- 
tion. In  a  later  age  it  was  endangered  and  at  last  it  was 
divided  by  secession.  The  crisis  is  represented  as  the 
consummation  of  a  wickedness  which  had  been  increasing 
in  the  land;  and  when  the  event  actually  followed,  it  was 
but  the  external  manifestation  of  the  sin  to  which  the  peo- 
ple had  yielded  a  dominion  over  themselves.  It  was  in 
its  action  and  its  result  the  culmination  of  great  crimes. 
It  was  when  the  people  had  lost  their  faith  in  an  invisible 
king,  and  had  sunk  into  an  idolatrous  condition  of  mind. 
It  was  when  the  consciousness  of  the  unity  of  the  nation 
and  its  continuity  in  God  had  become  utterly  obliterated. 
Then  its  disseverment  came  from  God ;  the  real  unity  and 
continuity  of  the  nation  in  God  was  already  no  longer 
acknowledged,  but  in  its  stead  only  the  artificial  bond  of  a 
formal  organization,  and  there  remained  only  faith  in  vis- 
ible things,  and  the  idolatrous  condition  which  is  its  se- 
quence. There  was  no  longer  the  consciousness  of  the 
divine  guidance  of  the  nation  and  its  divine  vocation  in 
history,  and  a  living  relation  in  it  of  the  fathers  to  the 


404  THE  NATION. 

children  ;  and  the  actual  secession  was  then  only  the  out- 
coming  of  the  actual  moral  dissolution  of  the  people.  The 
continuance  of  an  external  order  and  decorum  might  only 
conceal,  while  there  was  no  effort  to  overcome,  the  internal 
corruption  and  the  evil  consuming  all  within.  But  the  issue 
of  the  event  is  manifest  in  the  most  awful  judgments  of 
history.  The  record  is  borne  on  with  the  heavy  burden 
of  the  sorrows  of  the  people  through  all  the  centuries. 
There  came,  as  the  spirit  of  secession  disclosed  its  conse- 
quences, the  loss  of  all  consciousness  of  a  relation  to  the 
past,  and  of  the  unity  and  continuity  which  was  in  the 
divine  will.  The  leader  whose  personal  ambition  was 
foremost  in  the  secession,  and  through  whom  it  was  ef- 
fected, was  always  referred  to  in  the  long  refrain,  which 
is  repeated  by  the  prophets  from  year  to  year,  "  Jeroboam 
who  made  Israel  to  sin ;  "  and  of  succeeding  kings  it  is 
said,  "  he  walked  in  the  way  of  Jeroboam  and  of  his  sin, 
wherewith  he  made  Israel  to  sin."  The  narrative  of  those 
who  seceded  is  one  of  rapid  and  of  deepening  degradation, 
checked  by  no  higher  purpose  and  stayed  by  no  regener- 
ative power.  It  closes  at  last  in  their  overthrow  and  utter 
destruction.  Their  idolatry  becomes  more  gross  as  they 
sink  into  a  merely  animal  condition,  and  as  in  the  empires 
around  them,  there  is  only  the  recognition  and  worship  of 
the  animal  world.  Their  leader  made  images  of  gold, 
saying,  "  It  is  too  much  for  you  to  go  up  to  Jerusalem  :  be- 
hold thy  gods,  O  Israel,  which  brought  thee  up  out  of  the 
land  of  Egypt."  l  In  the  judgment  which  comes,  they  are 
themselves  divided  and  swept  utterly  away.  The  most 
fearful  imagery  lifts  the  veil,  which  falls,  not  to  be  lifted 
again.  "  The  Lord  shall  smite  Israel,  as  a  reed  is  shaken 
in  the  water,  and  he  shall  root  up  Israel  out  of  this  good 
land,  which  he  gave  to  their  fathers,  and  shall  scatter  them 
beyond  the  river.  And  he  shall  give  Israel  up,  because  of 
the  sins  of  Jeroboam,  who  did  sin  and  who  made  Israel  to 

1  1  Kings  xii.  28. 


THE  BEGINNING   AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  405 

sin."  l  The  result  of  the  secession  has  the  deepest  histor- 
ical significance.  There  were  associated  in  the  secession 
ten  tribes,  and  only  one  tribe  remained,  but  the  nation  itself 
was  not  therefore  utterly  to  perish.  Its  historical  work 
is  continued  in  the  one  tribe  that  remained  of  all  the  peo- 
ple, and  the  vocation  of  the  nation  and  the  divine  cove- 
nant with  the  fathers  in  which  the  nation  stood  was  ful- 
filled with  it.  In  it  there  is  the  unfolding  through  the 
advancing  years  of  the  purpose  of  the  nation  in  the  world, 
and  in  it  alone  there  is  maintained  an  unbroken  relation 
with  the  past  and  the  future,  in  the  greatness  of  their  an- 
cestral memories  and  their  immortal  hopes.  Although  its 
life  as  a  people  is  never  again  to  be  what  it  might  have 
been,  yet  with  it  is  the  history  of  the  people  fulfilled.  The 
record  of  the  seceding  tribes  is  one  of  uncertainty  and  of 
gloom  deepening  in  its  intensity,  until  at  last  they  are 
hidden  from  sight  and  pass  into  outer  darkness,  beyond 
the  line  in  which  is  the  development  of  history.  Their 
steps  are  gradually  obliterated,  and  there  is  at  last  no 
vestige  left.  The  search  for  them  is  a  vain  and  idle  in- 
quiry, and  becomes  the  fool's  errand  of  history.  To  the 
darkness  that  overtakes  them  there  is  no  uplifting. 

The  immediate  result  of  the  spirit  which  led  to  the  sep- 
aration of  the  people,  appears  in  the  formation  of  confed- 
eracies. It  is  the  working  of  a  confederate  spirit.  It  is 
the  sequence  of  secession,  and  involved  in  the  evil  which 
had  led  to  the  dissolution  of  the  whole.2  The  wars  which 
follow  are  unrelenting  and  conducted  with  a  hostility 
which  allows  no  ground  of  reconciliation.  These  wars  are 
to  settle  no  question  of  boundaries,  nor  are  they  for  the 
adjustment  of  interests  which  had  been  held  in  common, 
but  the  aim  of  each  is  the  utter  extinction  of  the  other. 
They  engage  for  this  object  the  aid  of  enemies,  with  whom 
the  nation  had  contended  in  all  its  greater  epochs.  They 
seek  the  intervention  of  foreign  powers,  and  league  them- 

i  1  Kings  xiv.  15, 16.  *  2  Kings  xvii.  22,  23. 


406  THE  NATION. 

selves  with  foreign  kings.  The  treasures  of  the  temple, 
which  was  a  witness  to  their  unity,  are  plundered  to  hire 
the  aid  of  foreign  mercenaries.  In  these  confederacies  the 
seceding  trihes  are  lost,  and  their  record  is  ended  with  the 
words  thrice  repeated,  "  The  Lord  removed  them  out 
of  his  sight,"  and  it  is  only  said  of  them,  "  He  delivered 
them  into  the  hands  of  the  spoilers,  for  they  walked  in  the 
sins  of  Jeroboam,  which  he  did ;  they  departed  not  from 
them,  until  the  Lord  removed  Israel  from  out  of  his  sight, 
as  he  had  said  by  all  his  servants,  the  prophets."  *  Yet 
on  to  the  close  —  and  there  is  scarcely  any  event  of  deeper 
pathos,  —  the  witness  that  the  foundation  of  the  unity  of 
the  nation  was  not  in  self-will  and  a  self-seeking  spirit,  but 
in  sacrifice,  is  continued  ;  wherever  the  true  altar  is  built, 
it  is  still  always  of  "  twelve  stones,  according  to  the  num- 
ber of  the  tribes  of  the  sons  of  Jacob."  2 

The  nation  is  represented  as  formed  in  a  divine  relation. 
It  is  not  constituted  in  the  distinction  of  a  race,  nor  in 
that  is  there  the  comprehension  of  its  unity  and  its  aim. 
In  its  development  it  is  not  determined  by  a  racial  law. 
The  glory  of  its  history  is  not  the  pride  of  a  race.  There 
were  events  of  the  most  impressive  circumstance  in  their 
beginning,  to  attest  that  the  nation  was  not  born  of  the 
flesh,  that  it  was  not  comprehended  in  a  physical  relation 
to  a  certain  ancestry,  and  that  its  continuance  was  not  de- 
fined in  a  certain  line  of  physical  descent.  The  warn- 
ing not  to  identify  the  nation  and  its  rights  and  privileges 


1  1  Kings  xviii.  31,  33. 

2  "  The  confederacy  of  the  Samaritans  with  the  Syrians  against  Judah,  was  en- 
countered by  the  confederacy  of  Judah  with  Assyria,  against  Israel.    It  was  no 
mere  border  war.    Each  sought  the  extermination  of  the  other.    These  confed- 
eracies denoted  the  spirit  at  the  root  of  all  the  crimes,  which  the  Prophet  had 
deplored  and  denounced. 

"  The  present  scheme  of  Samaria  to  extinguish  its  rival  even  at  the  cost  of 
giving  an  ascendency  to  the  uncircumcised  king  of  Damascus,  showed  clearly 
enough  that  the  last  link  of  brotherhood  was  broken,  because  the  last  feeling  of 
the  divine  calling  which  had  made  them  a  nation  was  gone."  —  Maurice,  Prophett 
and  Kings,  p.  249. 


THE  BEGINNING  AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  407 

with  a  physical  succession,  stands  in  awful  solemnity  in 
their  history,  as  if  in  its  clear  outline  wrought  in  the  strong 
lines  of  some  sculpture,  against  the  stillness  of  the  desert, 
when  the  only  one  in  the  line  of  its  physical  descent,  the 
child  of  the  bondwoman,  went  forth  into  the  solitude.  It 
was  not  the  child  of  the  flesh,  but  the  child  of  the  prom- 
ise that  was  the  inheritor  of  the  national  covenant.  Those 
whose  distinction  was  only  that  of  a  race,  were  to  pass  into 
a  merely  tribal  condition,  as  the  Ishmaelite.  In  the  as- 
sumption of  its  precedent  in  a  racial  character,  the  nation 
was  severed  from  its  divine  foundation.  Then  Abraham 
and  not  God  was  regarded  as  the  founder  of  the  nation.1 
In  the  assumption  of  its  foundation  in  a  physical  condition, 
and  its  unity  and  continuity  in  a  physical  basis,  it  became 
as  the  heathen  around  them,  and  had  no  other  ground 
than  they.  The  nation  was  formed  in  the  divine  covenant ; 
its  conception  was  lost  in  that  ethnic  claim.  Thus  their 
first  great  statesman  made  the  pride  of  race  and  the  dis- 
tinction of  physical  descent,  the  object  of  scorn,  and  gave 
expression  to  it  in  indelible  forms  in  the  service  of  the 
people.  They  were  bidden  to  bring  gifts  of  the  fruits  of 
the  earth  to  the  altar,  with  the  words,  "  a  Syrian  ready  to 
perish  was  my  father."2  There  can  be  scarcely  any 
measure  for  the  contempt  in  these  words,  when  a  Jew, 
representing  the  nation  as  formed  only  in  a  physical  con- 
dition, is  described  as  a  Syrian,  and  his  great  ancestor  as 
one  "  ready  to  perish."  And  by  all  the  prophets  this  pride 
is  denounced,  and  in  the  larger  humanity  of  its  later  ages, 
there  is  the  ampler  expression  of  the  worth  of  a  man. 
There  is  the  assertion  that  in  assuming  a  national  founda- 
tion in  the  possession  of  certain  racial  powers,  and  claiming 
it  through  a  pedigree  to  Abraham,  there  is  the  rejection 
of  the  divine  relation  in  which  the  nation  subsists.  It 
is  a  journeying  with  one  who  is  driven  into  the  solitude 

1  See  Maurice,  Prophets  and  Kings,  p.  309. 

2  Deuteronomy  x^vi.  5. 


408  THE  NATION. 

of  the  desert,  and  there  is  no  promise  beyond.  The  de- 
nunciation of  this  claim  is  sometimes  repeated,  as  if  in  it 
there  was  the  loss  of  all  which  the  nation  in  the  fulfillment 
of  its  promise  could  bring,  and  its  end  was  to  be  realized  by 
those  who  were  aliens  from  the  house  of  Israel, — "Doubt- 
less God  is  our  Father,  though  Abraham  be  ignorant  of  us, 
and  Israel  acknowledge  us  not."  And  when,  as  the  na- 
tional spirit  was  decaying,  the  pride  of  race  became  more 
and  more  exalted,  the  last  of  its  prophets  was  to  say  to 
them  in  the  streets  of  their  cities,  "  God  out  of  these 
stones  can  raise  up  children  unto  Abraham." 

The  nation  is  represented  from  its  beginning,  as  in  its 
being,  in  contrast  to  a  false  and  material  condition.  It  is 
the  conflict  of  the  nation  with  the  spirit  which  would  build 
a  Babel  upon  the  earth.  It  is  a  society  which  is  of  divine 
institution,  and  formed  in  its  unity  and  continuity  in  a 
divine  relation,  and  in  the  realization  of  relations  in  hu- 
manity, in  contrast  with  a  condition  in  which  fear  and 
self-interest  and  ill-will  are  the  prevailing  motives  in  the 
combination  of  men,  which  is  constituted  in  the  con- 
federation of  separate  interests,  and  for  the  pursuance  of 
selfish  ends,  to  subserve  only  the  pleasure  or  the  posses- 
sion of  men.  It  is  the  battle  borne  on  through  the  centu- 
ries of  a  society  which  is  formed  in  the  recognition  of  a 
divine  vocation,  and  of  a  law  of  righteousness  and  free- 
dom, with  the  forces  of  dissolution.  It  is  the  great  bat- 
tle of  humanity  with  all  that  oppresses  and  degrades  it, 
—  the  battle  of  Juda3a  with  Babylon.  The  one  appre- 
hends humanity  as  it  is  in  the  divine  image,  and  its  rights 
and  its  sacredness  which  society  is  to  realize ;  the  other 
assumes  in  humanity  an  existence  only  in  the  physical 
course  of  nature,  and  would  stamp  upon  it  the  image 
of  a  Babylonian  spirit.  The  one  is  the  life  of  the  nation, 
which  can  only  build  on  the  divine  foundation  ;  the  other 
would  build  of  its  own  materials,  the  brick  and  mortar 
which  it  has  gathered,  a  city  which  will  reach  from  the 


THE  BEGINNING   AND   GOAL   OF   HISTORY.  409 

earth  to  the  heavens.  It  is  this  with  which  the  nation  has 
to  contend  in  every  age,  —  the  spirit  which,  confessing 
only  a  material  bond,  will  bring  men  at  last  to  worship 
that. 

The  formation  of  the  nation  in  its  moral  being  and 
order,  is  the  source  of  the  sacredness  which  attaches 
always  to  the  land  and  the  capital,  and  the  public  memo- 
rials and  the  great  events  in  the  history  of  the  people. 
Their  sacredness  was  derivative  from  their  association  with 
the  nation ;  but  the  latter  was  not  conditioned  upon  them. 
The  land  was  sacred,  but  they  were  constituted  as  a  nation 
before  they  entered  into  the  possession  of  it ;  and  there 
was  promised  to  the  nation  a  permanence  beyond  that  of 
the  mountains  and  the  hills.  The  events  in  their  national 
history  were  the  witness  of  the  divine  presence,  the  sacra- 
ments of  the  Lord  of  Hosts.  The  capital  was  the  holy 
city,  and  yet  it  was  not  until  far  on  in  their  history  that  it 
was  built,  and  they  were  to  learn  that  the  foundation  of 
the  nation  was  not  in  the  stones  which  they  had  laid,  and 
that  its  unity  was  not  denned  in  city  walls.  The  work  of 
history  was  to  be  wrought  in  the  advance  of  the  nation, 
and  its  triumph  was  in  the  exultant  anthem,  "  Open  ye  the 
gates,  that  the  righteous  nation  which  keepeth  the  truth 
may  enter  in."  The  nation  persisted  through  all  the 
vicissitudes  of  time.  The  hope  of  the  Prophets  was  that 
it  was  immortal.  It  was  sustained  through  conquest  and 
captivity.  There  were  those  who  kept  its  ancient  truth, 
when  they  were  driven  to  the  secret  heights  of  its  moun- 
tains, and  its  life  did  not  wholly  perish  in  oppression,  or  in 
the  interruption  of  its  government,  or  the  destruction  of 
the  city,  or  the  leading  away  of  the  people  into  strange 
lands.  There  was  still  in  the  most  evil  days  a  remnant  left. 
Through  changes,  in  which  the  whole  external  fabric  and 
the  institution  of  its  government  was  destroyed,  there  con- 
tinued the  being  of  the  nation.  Its  life  was  beyond  the  ex- 
ternal and  the  formal  constitution,  and  was  not  conditioned 


410  THE   NATION. 

upon  that.  It  was  the  spirit  of  Pharisaism,  —  and  it  was 
originally  a  political  Pharisaism,  which  holding  in  identity 
the  moral  and  the  legal,  attached  a  sacredness  only  to  the 
latter,  —  the  letter  of  the  •  law,  —  and  conceived  the  life  of 
the  nation  as  conditioned  upon  that. 

The  process  which  sought  its  conclusion  through  the 
synthesis  of  political  science  and  the  formal  definitions  of 
politics,  comprehends  no  representation  of  the  nation  as  it 
is  found  in  the  record  of  the  first  nation.  The  terms  of  a 
formal  method  are  poor  and  empty  before  its  realism.  A 
writer,  who  may  be  taken  to  represent  recent  phases  in 
political  thought,  has  described  the  influence  in  politics  of 
what  he  calls  "  the  sentiment  of  nationality."  l  The  anal- 
ysis of  the  nature  and  effect  of  the  "  sentiment  of  nation- 
ality," offers  no  guide  to  the  interpretation  of  history  in 
the  past  or  in  the  present  age.  There  is  in  this  ancient 
record  the  presentation  of  the  being  of  the  nation  in  its 
origin  and  its  realization  in  the  life  of  humanity.  There 
is  the  manifestation  of  the  nation,  not  as  the  resultant  of 
individual  desire  or  emotion,  nor  as  comprehended  in  the 
definitions  of  a  formal  science  or  in  the  forms  of  law,  but 
as  in  its  realization  in  history. 

The  law  and  the  principle  which  are  presented  are  uni- 
versal. They  are  held  in  no  restrictive  conception  as  in 
the  notion  of  the  ecclesiast,  but  are  sustained  in  a  universal 
conception.  The  prophets  hold  in  them  the  interpretation 
of  all  history.  They  allow  no  other,  but  apply  these  to 
every  people,  and  in  their  light  alone  they  judge  the  widest 
sweep  in  their  political  horizon.  The  supremacy  of  their 
principles  is  presumed  in  their  universal  character.  They 
are  declared  to  be  universal,  and  to  show  the  ground  of  the 
life  of  every  nation.2 

1  J.  S.  Mill's  Representative  Government,  ch.  xvi.  on  "  Nationality." 
3  Jeremiah  viii.  7,  10. 

There  is  no  form  and  no  external  order  for  the  nation  which  is  divinely  given 
ae  alone  valid.    It  is  sometimes  said  that  since  the  Christ  is  represent  d  as  a  King, 


THE  BEGINNING   AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  411 

The  nation  in  its  historical  life  and  calling  moved  toward 
the  coining  of  Him  in  whom  there  was  the  manifestation 
of  the  real — the  divine  life  of  humanity.  The  work  of 
Judsea  and  Greece  and  Rome  had  its  unity  in  the  Christ, 
who  is  the  centre  of  history.  The  title  written  of  Him  in 
his  perfected  sacrifice,  was  the  King  of  the  Jews,  and  the 
words  to  which  history  was  to  bear  witness  in  the  ancient 
nations,  were  written  in  Hebrew,  and  Greek,  and  Latin. 
And  as  the  life  of  the  first  nations  was,  so  also  shall  that 
of  the  last  nations  be.  As  it  was  toward  his  coming  that 
the  nations  of  the  ancient  world  moved,  so  toward  Him, 
and  still  in  his  coming,  do  all  the  nations  move. 

and  his  power  in  the  world  as  a  kingdom,  that  therefore  the  form  of  a  monarchy 
is  to  be  universal,  and  again  from  certain  expressions  in  the  Prophets,  especially 
in  Jeremiah,  that  the  authority  is  to  be  that  of  an  elective  magistrate,  as  in  a 
Republic;  but  the  lesson  constantly  repeated  is  not  of  the  special  validity  of  an 
exact  and  prescribed  form,  but  that  the  form  is  moulded  by  the  age  and  by  the 
spirit  of  the  people,  and  the  nation  persists  through  changes  in  its  external  order 
and  administration,  and  its  continuity  is  maintained  through  them  but  is  not 
conditioned  upon  them. 

On  the  universal  application  of  the  representation  in  the  Old  Testament,  and 
its  relation  to  the  character  of  the  individua1,  Mr.  Maurice  says:  "I  apprehend 
that  we  shall  learn  some  da}-  that  the  call  to  individual  repentance  and  the 
promise  of  individual  reformation,  has  been  feeble  at  one  time,  productive  of 
turbulent  violent  transitory  effects  at  another,  because  it  has  not  been  part  of  a 
call  to  national  repentance,  because  it  has  not  been  connected  with  a  promise 
of  national  reformation." 

u  We  must  speak  again  the  ancient  language,  that  God  has  made  a  covenant 
with  the  nation;  if  we  would  have  an  inward  repentance,  which  will  really 
bring  us  back  to  God-,  which  will  turn  the  hearts  of  the  fathers  to  the  children, 
and  the  children  to  the  fathers;  which  will  go  down  to  the  roots  of  our  life, 
changing  it  from  a  self-seeking  life  into  a  life  of  humility,  and  love,  and  cheerful 
obedience,  which  will  bear  fruit  upward,  giving  nobleness  to  our  policy,  and  lit- 
erature, and  art;  to  the  daily  routine  of  what  we  shall  no  more  dare  to  call  our 
secular  existence."  —  Prophets  and  Kings,  p.  404. 

Mr.  Disraeli  says,  —  and  this  is  presented  as  a  principle  of  universal  application 
in  the  life  of  nations,  and  not  in  the  definition  of  a  racial  law,  and  it  is  not  the 
language  of  a  mystic  or  an  itinerant  thinker,  but  a  statesman  who  has  embodied 
his  thought  in  the  real  process  of  the  state,  "It  may  be  observed  that  the  de- 
cline and  disasters  in  modern  communities,  have  generally  been  relative  to  their 
degree  of  sedition  against  the  Semitic  principle.  England,  notwithstanding  her 
deficient  and  meagre  theology,  has  always  remembered  Zion.  The  great 
transatlantic  Republic  is  intensely  Semitic,  and  has  prospered  accordingly. 
This  sacred  principle  alone  has  consolidated  the  mighty  empire  of  all  the 
Russias."  —  Life  of  Bentinck,  p.  81. 


412  THE  NATION. 

The  relation  of  the  Hebrew  and  the  Christian  nation  is 
\  not  one  of  difference,  but  of  development.  It  has  its  con- 
dition in  the  higher  and  ampler  revelation.  The  one  was 
governed  by  an  invisible  ruler,  and  moved  toward  his  com- 
ing ;  the  other  is  governed  by  a  ruler  who  has  manifested 
himself  to  the  world,  and  is  coming  in  the  world.  The 
one  looked  with  faith  toward  his  coming ;  the  other  looks 
to  Him  as  to  one  whose  power  has  been  revealed  on  the 
earth  and  in  its  redemption.  The  one  was  subject  to  an 
external  authority, — the"u  Thus  saith  "  of  the  divine  word  ; 
the  other  is  subject  to  a  law  which  is  manifested  in  the 
spirit,  it  is  written  in  the  minds  and  in  the  hearts  of  men. 
The  body  has  become  a  temple  of  the  spirit.  The  word  is 
uttered  not  from  heaven  above,  but  is  nigh  unto  men  and 
on  their  lips.  The  work  is  to  be  the  fulfillment  of  the  law 
of  the  Christ  who  is  the  only  and  the  actual  head  of  the 
state. 

There  is  always  a  tendency  to  return  to  the  Jewish  or 
Grecian,  or  Latin  form,  but  it  is  in  the  denial  of  the  real 
presence  of  the  Christ,  —  the  rejection  of  the  only  and 
the  actual  King.  In  this  reaction  the  nation  loses  its 
spiritual  power,  it  is  merged  in  a  mere  formalism,  and  is 
no  longer  in  a  living  relation  to  a  living  and  eternal  Will. 

The  law  by  which  the  nation  is  judged,  is  the  law  which 
the  Christ  has  revealed  in  his  humanity.  In  Him  the  divine 
unity  and  the  divine  relations  of  humanity  are  revealed. 
He  has  shared  the  life  of  man,  —  the  life  of  every  man.  In 
Him  humanity  is  manifested  in  that  infinite  sacredness 
which  it  has  in  the  divine  and  eternal  image.  It  is  only 
as  the  nation  recognizes  the  law  of  humanity  which  He 
has  revealed  that  it  attains  the  realization  of  its  being. 
It  is  only  as  the  nation  acknowledges  in  history  the  infinite 
worth  of  humanity  which  He  has  manifested,  that  it  can 
become  a  power  in  history,  which  is  but  the  realization  of 
the  divine  redemption  which  He  has  wrought.1 

1  Matthew  xxv.  32,  45. 


THE  BEGINNING   AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  413 

The  crises  of  the  progress  of  nations  in  the  deliverance 
of  humanity,  are  described  in  the  sign  of  his  power,  — 
they  are  the  days  of  the  Son  of  Man,  who  is  revealed  as 
the  eternal  conqueror.  In  the  overthrow  of  the  tyrannies 
which  have  oppressed  and  degraded  men,  and  of  the  lies 
and  frauds  by  which  nations  have  been  deceived,  and  in 
the  rising  of  new  hopes,  and  the  unfolding  of  new  ener- 
gies, there  is  the  advent  of  the  Christ,  —  the  coming  of 
the  Son  of  Man. 

The  only  foundation  then  upon  which  man  can  build  in 
the  life  of  the  individual  or  of  society,  is  in  Him ;  "  other 
foundation  can  no  man  lay  than  that  which  is  lying."  It 
is  in  the  law  which  is  revealed  in  the  Christ  that  the  sol- 
idarity of  human  society  is  manifested.  It  is  formed  in  no 
selfish  principle.  It  becomes  evident  that  no  man  liveth 
for  himself.  Each  is  the  minister  of  the  whole.  In  the 
profound  words  of  M.  Comte,  it  is  seen  that  "  to  live  for 
others,"  is  but  another  form  uof  living  by  others."  The 
paradox  is  verified,  he  that  loseth  his  life  shall  find  it.  The 
foundation  is  that  which  the  builders  rejected.  The  cor- 
ner-stone is  not  in  slavery,  but  in  Him  who  died  on  this 
earth  as  a  slave,  that  He  might  redeem  all.  It  is  the  power 
which  is  manifested  in  sacrifice,  and  the  law  of  service  is 
the  law  of  power.  It  is  the  mightier  power,  and  "  on 
whomsoever  this  rock  shall  fall  it  shall  grind  him  to  pow- 
der." 

The  nation  is  lifted  above  the  divisions  and  distinctions 
of  race.  There  is  the  assertion  of  the  physical  unity  of 
humanity,  and  of  the  divine  determination  in  the  times  of 
the  existence  and  the  bounds  of  the  dwelling  of  nations.1 
And  the  people  that  comes  to  believe  that  there  is  a  pur- 
pose in  the  ages,  will  watch  the  "  signs  of  the  times,"  for 
the  attainment  of  the  purpose  which  is.  given  them,  and 
In  the  faith  that  their  boundaries  in  the  fulfillment  of  their 
vocation  are  divinely  appointed,  they  will  guard  them  well. 

i  AAs  xvii.  26. 


414  THE  NATION. 

The  nation  is  formed  as  a  power  on  the  earth.  It  is 
invested  with  power  of  God  ;  its  authority  is  conveyed 
through  no  intermediate  hands,  but  is  given  of  God.  It 
is  clothed  with  his  majesty  on  the  earth.  It  is  ordained 
of  God  to  do  his  service.  It  is  0eou  Sia/coi/os.1 

The  realization  of  the  redemptive  purpose  in  history  is 
represented  under  a  political  form.  The  Christ  is  a  King, 
and  the  realization  of  his  redemptive  work  is  a  kingdom. 
The  type  expressive  of  his  power  is  drawn  from  the  polit- 
ical life  of  man.  But  there  is  in  this  only  the  assumption 
of  the  political  form  which  had  attained  the  most  nearly  to 
a  universality  in  history.  The  divine  power  has,  in  the 
Christ  in  this  form,  only  its  earthly  representation.  It  is 
the  power  of  one  who,  in  his  own  divine  and  eternal  being, 
is  the  only  source  of  power. 

The  end  toward  which  the  nations  in  the  earlier  ages 
moved,  and  toward  which  all  the  nations  move, —  the  centre 
of  history,  —  is  the  Christ.  The  revelation  is  in  a  Person. 
The  manifestation  which  kings  and  prophets  waited  for, 
and  which  all  the  types  and  traditions  of  the  hope  and 
longing  in  history  foreshadowed,  is  in  the  divine  Person. 
The  revelation  is  not  in  a  divine  system,  nor  a  divine  form, 
nor  a  divine  idea.  In  the  divine  relationship,  which  is 
manifested  in  the  Father  and  the  Son  and  the  Spirit, 
there  is  the  foundation  of  humanity  and  the  realization  of 
the  human  personality.  In  the  Christ  there  is  the  man- 
ifestation of  the  divine  origin  and  relations  of  humanity, 
and  the  eternal  life  which  is  given  to  it ;  in  Him  it 
overcomes  the  evil  of  the  world,  and  is  victorious  over 
death,  and  in  the  power  of  the  resurrection  is  risen  with 
Him,  and  ascending  with  Him,  is  glorified  with  Him  in 
the  glory  which  He  had  with  the  Father  before  the  world 
was.  Its  life  is  still  only  in  the  realization  of  personality, 
—  in  the  obedience  to  his  will,  in  the  doing  of  his  work, 
after  the  law  which  He  in  his  own  person  has  revealed. 

1  Romans  xii.  5. 


THE  BEGINNING  AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  415 

In  this  only  there  is  the  reconciliation  of  freedom  and  law, 
the  law  of  the  spirit,  the  law  which  is  laid  in  personality ; 
in  this  only  does  personality  subsist  in  those  relations 
which  are  necessary  to  its  being ;  in  this  only  there  is  the 
unity,  without  the  contradiction,  of  humanity  and  person- 
ality. Therefore  the  nation,  as  it  has  its  end  in  the  moral 
realization  of  the  life  of  humanity,  is  to  regard  each  indi- 
vidual person  also  as  an  end,  for  there  is  for  each  the  infinite 
sacredness  which  is  revealed  in  the  Christ,  —  the  Life  of 
humanity.  The  Christ  who  is  declared  to  be  the  head 
of  humanity  "  is  the  head  of  every  man."  In  the  Christ, 
there  is  the  unity  and  foundation  of  humanity  in  its  divine 
origin,  and  the  realization  of  personality  is  in  its  redemp- 
tive life. 

In  the  Christ  there  is  the  revelation  of  the  divine  life  of 
humanity.  It  is  held  in  no  abstract  and  formal  concep- 
tion as  the  evolution  of  a  logical  sequence ;  it  is  held  in 
no  vague  and  empty  conception,  as  in  an  unhistorical 
existence ;  it  is  the  resultant  of  no  numerical  estimate  ; 
it  is  no  indefinite  and  unlimited  being  in  which  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  individual  is  lost ;  but  there  is  the  revela- 
tion of  humanity  in  its  realization  in  personality,  in  its 
divine  relations.  In  the  Christ  as  the  Prophet,  and  Priest, 
and  King,  there  is  alone  the  source  of  the  prophetic,  and 
priestly  and  kingly  powers  in  humanity.  The  comprehen- 
sion of  humanity  in  an  isolated  individualism  is  false  and 
unreal.  It  is  the  source  only  of  an  evil  egoism.  It  is  the 
lord  of  division. 

It  is  only  as  the  nation  has  for  its  end  the  fulfillment  in 
its  moral  being  of  the  life  of  humanity,  that  it  has  its  real- 
ization in  history.  It  is  in  its  work  alone,  in  the  fulfillment 
of  the  will  of  the  Christ,  that  it  becomes  a  power  in  the 
realization  of  his  redemption,  which  is  the  life  of  history, 
and  in  which  humanity  alone  has  the  foundation  of  its 
unity.  The  work  which  is  for  humanity,  in  its  simplest 
and  widest  form,  is  the  work  for  and  of  the  Christ ;  he 


416  THE  NATION. 

has  himself  declared  his  very  oneness  with  humanity,  as 
the  law  hy  which  the  nation  is  to  be  judged.1 

The  nation  is  to  work  in  the  realization  on  the  earth  of 
his  kingdom,  who  is  the  only  and  the  eternal  King.  It 
becomes  then  no  more  the  kingdom  of  this  world,  but  the 
Kingdom  of  Him  whose  reign  is  of  eternal  truth,  —  the 
reign  in  which,  in  the  realization  of  personality,  there  is 
the  freedom  of  man.  Its  advance  is  only  in  his  advent,  its 
destination  is  toward  Him.  Its  new  ages  are  the  days  of 
the  coming  of  the  Son  of  Man.  Its  freedom  is  only  in  his 
redemptive  strength.  It  is  no  more  the  life  of  the  first 
man,  of  the  earth  earthy. 

,  The  nation  in  the  last  as  in  the  first  age,  has  still  the 
source  of  its  strength  only  in  its  relation  to  its  divine  Lord. 
The  danger  is  still  in  the  denial  or  forgetfulness,  in  a  mate- 
rial existence,  of  this  relation.  The  representation  of  the 
sins  of  Judaaa,  in  their  principle  and  their  effect,  is  that  of 
the  sins  of  every  nation.  In  the  violation  of  the  divine  rela- 
tion in  which  the  nation  is  formed,  and  the  rejection  of  its 
covenant,  the  sins  of  the  nation  are  denounced  as  its  adulte- 


ries. 


The  conflict  of  the  nation  is  still  borne  on  to  the  close 
of  history  in  the  antagonism  to  a  false  civilization.  It  is  the 
conflict  with  a  material  civilization  which  would  build  on 
the  earth  a  Babylon.  It  is  as  the  nation  yields  to  the  spirit 
of  a  Babylon  that  there  is  the  loss  of  its  freedom  and  its 
moral  being.  It  is  described  as  one  who  is  enchanted  and 
demented  and  besotted  and  deceived,  as  "  drunk  of  the 
wine  of  the  wrath  of  her  fornication."  It  is  only  as  it  con- 
tends against  this  spirit  that  it  becomes  a  power  in  the 
moral  life  of  history,  that  it  follows  with  the  armies  of  Him, 
who  "in  righteousness  doth  judge  and  make  war."  In 
Him  the  victory  whose  sign  of  conquest  is  the  coming  of 
the  Son  of  Man,  —  the  victory  of  humanity,  —  is  assured. 
The  imagery  illustrative  of  the  most  actual  condition,  por- 

i  Matthew  xxiii.  45.  2  Revelation  xviii.  3. 


THE  BEGINNING   AND   GOAL   OF  HISTORY.  417 

trays  the  downfall  of  Babylon  in  the  battles  of  the  centuries. 
It  is  described  as  invested  with  the  circumstance  of  a  false 
and  material  civilization,  "the  great  city  that  glorified 
herself  and  lived  deliciously,"  that  saith,  "I  sit  a  queen, 
and  shall  see  no  sorrow,"  that  was  "  clothed  in  fine  linen 
and  purple  and  scarlet,  and  decked  with  gold  and  precious 
stones  and  pearls,"  but  in  its  doom  "  with  violence  shall 
that  city  be  thrown  down,"  for  "  by  thy  sorceries  were  all 
nations  deceived."  It  is  no  distant  city,  so  dim  and  unreal 
as  only  to  be  wrought  in  spectral  imagery,  and  no  imagin- 
ary strife,  as  if  fought  by  phantom  armies,  and  no  war  of 
ideas  in  some  intellectual  field.  It  is  the  reality  of  history, 
it  is  "a  city  whose  merchants  were  the  great  men  of  the 
earth,"  and  in  its  overthrow  "  the  company  in  ships  and 
sailors,  and  as  many  as  trade  by  sea,  stood  afar  off,  and 
cried  when  they  saw  the  smoke  of  its  burning,  saying, 
*  what  city  is  like  unto  this  great  city.' '  The  language 
which  denotes  its  character,  presents  no  type  of  individual 
passion  or  action,  no  ideal  state,  no  mystic  city  of  the  soul, 
but  it  is  the  type  of  an  inhuman,  a  material  civilization. 
The  victory  over  it  is  in  the  deliverance  of  humanity,  and 
yet  in  the  description  of  those  who  fall  upon  its  battle-field, 
there  is  only  one  word  to  indicate  the  moral  character  of 
the  battle  fought,  — "  there  is  the  flesh  of  kings  and  the 
flesh  of  captains  and  the  flesh  of  mighty  men,  and  the  flesh 
of  horses  and  of  them  that  sat  on  them,  and  the  flesh  of 
all  men,  both  free  and  bond ; "  and  in  the  schedule  of  trade 
which  is  given  with  such  detail,  as  if  to  compel  attention 
to  its  real  character,  there  is  only  one  word  to  indicate  its 
moral  condition,  —  "  the  merchandise  of  gold  and  silver, 
and  precious  stones,  and  of  pearls,  and  fine  linen,  and  pur- 
ple, and  silk,  and  scarlet,  and  all  thyine  wood,  and  all  man- 
ner of  vessels  of  ivory,  and  all  manner  of  vessels  of  most 
precious  stones,  and  of  brass,  and  iron,  and  marble,  and  cin- 
namon, and  odours,  and  ointments,  and  frankincense,  and 
wine,  and  oil,  and  fine  flour,  and  wheat,  and  beasts,  and 

27 


418  THE  NATION. 

sheep,  and  horses,  and  chariots,  and  slaves  and  souls  of 
men."  * 

The  goal  of  history  is  in  the  fulfillment  of  the  highest 
political  ideal.  It  is  the  holy  city  ;  it  is  the  new  Jerusa- 
lem, the  end  of  the  toil  and  conflict  of  humanity.  There 
is  the  manifestation  of  God  as  the  centre  of  the  moral  uni- 
verse. Of  that  vision  it  is  written  in  the  book  which  of 
all  others  has  the  voice  of  anthems  and  the  swell  of  litur- 
gies, —  and  amid  the  confusions  of  sects  and  opposing  ec- 
clesiasticisms  the  words  are  as  those  of  peace,  —  "I  saw 
no  temple  there."  There  is  the  unity  of  the  universe 
which  has  been  revealed  in  the  eternal  sacrifice, — "the 
glory  of  God  doth  lighten  it,  and  the  Lamb  is  the  light 
thereof."  It  is  toward  it  that  the  nations  move  in  the 
fulfillment  of  the  life  of  humanity.  It  is  written  of  the 
holy  city,  "they  shall  bear  the  glory  and  honor  of  the 
nations  into  it."  '2 

The  conflict  of  the  ages  of  humanity  is  closed.  The 
battle  is  ended  in  eternal  triumph.  The  humiliation  has 
passed  into  the  glorification  of  the  Son  of  Man,  and  in  that 
eternal  relationship  with  the  Father  and  the  Spirit  there  is 
for  humanity  the  realization  of  that  glory  which  He,  who  is 
the  Son  of  God,  had  before  the  world  was. 

The  nation  is  to  work  as  one  whose  achievement  passes 
beyond  time,  whose  glory  and  honor  are  borne  into  the 
eternal  city.  It  is  not  here  that  it  may  look  for  its  perfect 
rest.  It  has  an  immortal  life.  It  is  no  more  a  kingdom 
of  this  world,  but  it  is  formed  in  the  realization  of  the 
redemptive  kingdom  of  the  Christ.  The  leaders  and  the 
prophets  of  the  people  can  only  repeat  the  ancient  lesson, 
"He  is  come,  and  unto  Him  shall  the  gathering  of  the 
oeople  be." 

1  Revelation  xviii.  a  Revelation  xxi.  26. 


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